My Life in Song Lyrics
Saturday night I heard part of the song Father Figure for the first time in several years. Smell is supposed to be the sense most linked to memory, but for me it's music that can do the trick of zapping my brain from wherever it is now to a very specific feeling in time then.
In this case, it's junior high, when I was acutely aware of how much I was not preferred by the boys in my school. I never realized how horrifying the lyrics were, or if I did realize it I made sure to bury that knowledge so I could succumb to the fantasy of having someone appear to take care of me and make it all perfect.
Now that I'm finally learning this isn't how it works, the song punched the buttons for both nostalgia and loss. I don't much appreciate having Alanis Morissette narrate a chunk of my current personal developmental struggle, but she accurately identifies the overwhelming power of the stories we tell ourselves - and in my case, reinforce with a soundtrack.
It's not just the ill-chosen George Michael, it's also the years spent excusing the misogyny of heavy metal by concentrating on the one ballad per album that "proved" the bad boys really did have hearts of gold. I have to wonder whether there was an explicit decision made in that commercial machine to engage in serious gender programming that would make it impossible for young men and women to have healthy relationships - by feeding them one-dimensional tales of lust run wild (for the boys) and the perfect myth of romantic love (for the girls).
I don't know if I heard a realistic depiction of adult relationships in music until I heard Ani DiFranco, and that means I spent at least a decade making mix CDs and telling myself stories that reinforced every tendency I had towards living in a made-up world where love at first sight was the only real thing.
But I'm now well past the George Michael and heavy metal eras in my life, and I have finally figured out that I get to make choices about my actions no matter what bad programming has done to my brain. Since May I have been given three tasks by the universe to let me practice new behavior. I passed the first test all by myself even though it hurt, but I needed a little reality check from C. to get through the second one.
The third will be interesting. I feel like I have to figure it out myself, but I can't yet tell whether I'm supposed to turn off the music by avoiding the situation, or grow a little more by learning to act rationally even though Semisonic is echoing in the back of my head.
Wish me luck.
"Enjoy every sandwich" --Warren Zevon in his last public appearance.
I think Warren also would have gotten a kick out of the grrls munching on sandwiches. ;)
May you have luck in buckets, large metal buckets that are delivered to your home. And lids, so that none of the luck spills out.