Words

I talk a lot.  The bible says that "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh."  I imagine that anyone hearing me speakething can tell a lot about my heart.  I wear it, mostly, in my words, though some parts get kept back when I lack the mechanism for expressing them.  And some parts of the heart are really only expressed in touch, which I don't do.

    It should be obvious that I don't think things in general are quite the way they ought to be, and that this matters to me a great deal.  It should be obvious that I don't think enough people mean what they say or say what they mean.  It should be obvious that I don't predict success in most ventures planned by more than about two people, expecting it to become about personalities and committees and titles and funding and credit and "say" rather than...whatever the original goal was.  It should be obvious that I don't have much belief in the mythic powers of secrecy to keep me safe from the disrespect of others.  It should be obvious that I was raised to be "special/better than normal people."  All so that I could make the world a better place by kindly not judging lesser people, and by being a good example to them as to how superior/special/Christian lives worked.
   So, whenever I screw up big-time and am just normal, more or less like everyone else, I feel like a huge failure, which is to say crappy.  Because to people raised like me, normal's not nearly good enough.  To us, the illusion of perfect is supposed to be "normal" for us.  And just coming off as "normal" is utter "failure."  (And it goes without saying that we don't even have a way of looking at ourselves if we should slip below "normal" in some way.  We don't have problems, you see, because we have Jesus.)

   But words and stories have always been very important to me.  My childhood, in many ways, could be looked at as a time when the stories and songs I longed for were being shut out of my life by the keepers of religious stories and songs.  To "protect me" from them.  I suspect they didn't trust their own stories and songs to stand up to, say The A-Team or "Beat It" in winning young hearts and challenging us and expressing what was inside us, and about to blossom.  (Joy, for instance.) There were human, living, breathing things that were daily, routinely shut out of their stories and songs (quite apart from in the bible, of course.  Lots of stuff that can be in the bible can never be in a "Christian" well... anything at all) and I was wanting to go after these stories and songs, these words, and was being denied all of it.  And it made me very unhappy.

   Thing is: if you're forbidden the majority of stories and songs, if you're lucky you can just make your own.  So, many of us did that.  And then when you grow up, you can go ahead and read Doctor Who books if you want to.  Or puzzle over Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen lyrics.  You can even enjoy time with friends, while having a drink, and listening to or singing a song about enjoying time with friends.  After all, it's what we're going to do in heaven, surely?  Eat?  Drink?  Celebrate?  According to the bible, anyway.  If that matters to anyone.

   But one thing you soon know, if you dabble in words at all: words don't quite cut it.  They do a lot, but they fall short.  So, fresh out of university, I wrote a poem/song that was intended to show words trying, but failing, to express what was in my heart.  Contradictions.  The ebb and flow of the tumultuous tides of young emotion.  It wasn't wonderful, but it made me feel better, which is why it was written:

Words Cannot Express
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Remorse wrapped in rage kindles the grey ashes 
Of the pale black fire that on your white shore smashes 
Hurt and aching hunger fill the empty place 
Left by all the anger that's twisting on your face 
Uncomprehending glances take a careful look 
Then retreat back by the eye-trail that to you they took 
Unexpressed opinions hang in the dead air 
Soft and anguished, beating, they strain but do not dare

            Words can't tell the story

            No matter how we rage

            But to tell the story

            Words are all we have

Confused retreat to solitude, need to be alone 
To think out some solutions to the problems that you own 
But they are all feelings and they obey no laws 
Cutting through cold logic with white-hot argent claws

All this troubled turmoil of feelings with no reason 
With no reason will be gone, return another season 
Words cannot express and logic can't contain 
The recurring feelings that wake in you such pain 

Words cannot encompass, can't convey the sorrow 
You can live because the mood might not be here tomorrow 
All this feeling is the work of a child in a foul rage 
He lives in me and lives on me because I am his cage


I even tried to record a particularly ambitious version of this song, but was unable to make the pieces quite come together and work smoothly.  Various old computers conspired to help ensure each instrument was slightly out of time with each other and the voice.  Very disjointed.  But there are whales in there.  Also a backward-masked sermon about the dangers of backward masking in modern music.  And a monster baby crying.