Composers Don't Lie.

So I'm on the open road, moving from one not-so familiar place to another. Right now I'm alternating between listening to old cds I haven't listened to since high school or shortly thereafter, and thinking about the memories entangled up in lyrics that sound far more trite than they ever used to when I knew some of them by heart.
There's a lot of Christian rock cds in this little case... for that was the only type of music my parents approved of when I bought them, and I continued to buy such cds a few years afterwards as well. For most of these cds, the melodies and messages are at best censored, and at worst, weak, even ignorant. I cringe at the lyrics espousing a love for the lost and searching from a position of peace and security, a ladder down to hell. People never seem to sing them like they actually believe them.. (I saw a lot of Christian dance routines and multimedia presentations put to secular songs for this very reason in my day). Occasionally someone's poetry would lift up or delve down to something seemingly heartfelt, and it is generally the delving. They sing of failing God, struggling to hold onto faith, or they speak of a hole in their soul they desperately want to fill with that of the divine.
There's one cd in particular that kicks in the adrenaline. This one was a late addition to the collection, I had bought it off another American student I met in Malaysia who composed the songs herself on the piano and wrote her own lyrics. The compositions themselves I find vivid and moving... far more so than many of the other songs on these cds. You ever notice how you can pick out a Christian song after only a few seconds on the radio? I don't know most of these contemporary songs... but they sound well... Christian. I have my own thoughts on why that is, and it goes along with an urge to change the channel to something that sounds a lot less... fake.
This woman's composition was differently... until the lyrics kicked in. You could picture the piano describing the finality of death in a movie: a funeral at sunset or the wreckage of a storm. Yet the lyrics speak not of devastation, but of triumph. It's strikingly odd. She uses common words, and common if not banal metaphors​. She needed a thick skin to survive, the winter was long... but here comes God. Magically, everything is ok. She has joy, hope, and something to be thankful for.
I don't believe those words for a second. Composers don't lie.
In real life, she is an extremely empathetic woman who hinted to a very painful past. I know her only in bits and pieces despite living in the same house with her for about 8 or 9 months. She'd laugh all too loud and smile all too much, and denied with her words a romantic attraction that was broadcast nonverbally to everyone in the house. No one would have made such a big deal of it if it wasn't for that contradiction, I think. I'm not sure why people care about other people's love lives so much in the first place, at least when they don't turn out the way we like them too.
It was God's grace, she had told me, that she couldn't remember about 7 years of her life. She remembered bits and pieces,waking up under tables, strange bruises... a few things at school. But memories of that time were scattered and fuzzy, except that she had been very much abused. She told me she didn't want to remember... and she credited God for not being able to.
She sings humbly, fawningly, about lying at God's feet waiting for him to answer her repeated pleas. She had no where else to go... and she really wanted to just see his face... to get an answer. Would we be able to identify with this woman if it wasn't God in this chair? Why doesn't she get up? Why doesn't she take her problems to someone who will answer her, identify with her, stop ignoring her? Again she is abused... contentedly so, judging for the songs. Regardless, she admits, she has no where else to go but here. Praise God.
The the song tumbles on like a death scene in a movie... like the bird that sings at 3:30 AM awaiting the dawn. I believe every note of her music, and read behind every word. and I'd like to believe that in the next song, or the next... that dawn will come, and she will convince me that she has something to be joyful of. She never did. None of those cds did. I've met happy, fulfilled Christians with happy songs... but I also meet many more happy people who don't share their faith.
Six months ago I saw this composer. She was now married, and with a child. She had gained quite a bit of weight.... She''d laugh about doing her best to take off the “baby weight” with the third slice of lasagna or second slice of cake, and she'd smile bright as always... oblivious that people could see that people could observe a disconnect between word and action. I sat on her couch and talked with her briefly, maybe 45 minutes. She smiled when she told me she cared and it was so great to see me, and she proceeded to “love on me”. She smiled when she told me, with the authority of a bible teacher, that God's love justified eternal hell or genocide of non-Israelites in the Old Testament at God's command. She smiled when she asked incredulously, how I could believe in evolution on such little evidence. I allowed her to expound, and she couldn't... really. She asked questions that made it clear that she did not know what the scientific method was, (I think she asked if empiricism was the same as atheism, as well as a few things related to simpler scientific terminology, and I didn't know how to explain simply in a manner that didn't seem demeaning. Besides... scientific facts and faith are to me very different issues, and I only wanted to talk about one at a time. I could explain the theory of evolution, sure, just like I might be able to explain the theory of gravity or a mathematical law. But it had little to do with my feelings on ethics, or how I was doing in life. To her I was sad, I was fallen away from God, and thus I believed such silly things. She was an emotionally charged girl... her beliefs followed her convictions. My convictions are based on skeptical interpretations of my knowledge based on observation. She never got that no matter of her “love” would convince me that the bible was literally true, or even if facts are ignored completely, even describes a God whose ethics or personality could be described as unconditionally loving or virtuous.
I am angry when I think of people like her. I am not angry at her directly... for like anyone else capable of doing the greatest wrong, she is largely oblivious. She is a very hurt person.. who believes so strongly in something that she has refused to allow it to be questioned or examined logically for holes or contradictions. She lays beliefs about facts to a peaceful emotional feeling, for she feels her emotional hunger for God has been quenched.
The songs are full of this need for love, understanding, clarity peace. They tell me only God is trustworthy, and only God can fill these things, when every other song they look for this God and describe his absence in their lives. They blame themselves, inevitably... he was right where they left him, and they must have did something evil to drive them away. The quenching of human need, I agree with them, is sacred. I cannot talk someone out of an emotional feeling of awe... and I'd never want to take that away from anyone. But what they do not realize is that this feeling may be experienced by people of different faiths... or of people of no faiths at all. That feeling of spiritual aew is certainly not connected to hell, or genocide.... or an ancient translations of text.
Part of me wants to hold this woman and and let her cry... for I feel her pain very vividly through her music as I go down this highway, and think of her, yet I fear that all I will ever see of her is that facetious smile. I empathize with her, but will never reduce her to someone pitiable. I don't have answers for her, or a magic fix. I have no reason to believe there even is such a thing. I would not presume to be a missionary of agnosticism, but only a friend... If she can smile at me in such a way as I believe it, I will never wish to take that away from her, I will only want to share it.

My Vicious Cycle of Fucktarded Fluff.

I wrote this poem a few month ago-ish. It's safe to post it now I suppose, because I hate the state of mind it describes. It, like all things, is worth me remembering, and examining: just hopefully not reliving. It will be easier someday. Right now I am sitting in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of stuff in a backpack. As suck, I have a lot to write about, a lot to think about... and a lot of the mental clutter has been tossed away, or at least left at home.

Goddammit. If I ever try the vicious cycle again... (and if you know me, you know what I mean): shoot me. Twice. Or just stab me. I will personally loan you the sword. Hell, you can even keep it when you are done. Just specify if you want the WWI bayonet, the Indian ornamental ones... the throwing knife...


Passion

I walk on by when I fear you most
I've heard that voice before
The constancy, the uncertainty
I've heard that voice.
It told me many things in whispers
through still cool mornings and scattered frames
until suddenly with stiff brightness
I listened and heard nothing,

But here we are again.
Where that voice is still sweet,
and only here and now I can't rebuke it
when I'm trying not to hear you.
For fuck's sake not to love you
Not to let this words pour out even to myself
For I know this place
And it knows my weakness, holding.
words and salt but never anything worthwhile

Never you, but always me
You always with the smiles and the small talk
And me with the fountain of memory
of everything except
the marvel and the mayhem
Of laughing and loving and chaos on the road
of the still peace that held me steady
there... that still and steady blaze
you with those eyes so loving...
for today.
But only for today.

Bearing through me now, You whisper
For now... despite what I shudder
And my words to the contrary
And I love you
And to love you when the sun comes.
I'll move my feet again.
and wind up following the rays the whole world round

Bearing through me now, the whisper
And I walk, but I'm not moving
You can run, but you have held me.
Because you are all I know of passion
and all I know of home.