May 19, 2005

• Hiccuping Kittens, http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=HiccupingKittens has issued a challenge of writing an essay about your five points in your life, but you have to link the essay to five songs. Here is what I came up with.

  
  

  Somewhere over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz.

  
  

  I remember watching this movie when I was a little girl on TV. It usually came on between two important football games either around Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was one of the few children’s movies I could watch on TV when my father was home, and that was because there weren’t any good sports events on TV when the movie aired. I used to be puzzled when Dorothy would click her ruby red slippers together to come home. Due to the abuse I received, as a child, I would think to myself that if I were in OZ, then I would stay there. Who would ever want to leave such a spot. —Years later, when I was going through my hippie phase they brought this movie back to the big screen. I grew up with black and white tv, so in an drug induced state I was in awe when the movie went to color after Dorothy went to OZ. I actually had to go back to see the movie without any drugs in me to make sure that I was really seeing what I saw.

  
  

  Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkle

  
  

  As a teen I was introduced to this song as a poem in my English class. I loved it so much that it became the first full album I purchased. It was followed by many others. But this song was one I really bonded to. “But echoed in thoe Sounds of Silence.” It was filled with all the rhetoric of the things that I felt was wrong with society, it accurately portrayed the depression and angst that I was feeling, and at that time I felt so terribly alone. In the 60′s and 70′s not much about incest and abuse were talked about, it was one of those dirty and dark secrets. So I felt alone, isolated, and depressed and suicidal. This song met that mood perfectly, as did a few of the other Simon and Garfunkle songs like I am a Rock and Bridge over Troubled Waters. It is hard to pin down your life in only five songs. But it started a period of time where I wrote poetry. I don’t know where those poems are now, but only one stayed in my mind.

  
  

  I shared it before, but here is what I can remember. I guess I remember it because it is my first poem.

  
  

  In a Corner

  
  

  In a Corner
  all alone,
  I sit and bemoan
  All the evils in society
  I see so clearly inside of me.
  
  (Chorus) But it is hopless and of no avail,
  for any atttempt at solution will fail.

  
  

  Race riots, robberies, killings elections
  Lead me to many strange reflections
  Of societies crumbling,
  And governments tumbling.
  
  (Chorus)

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  The soundtrack for the movie Billy Jack

  
  

  I fanticized so much about being in a school like this movie portrayed. A place where maybe healing could occur and where I would be loved somehow. I kept thinking about one of the main characters, a girl who came to the school pregnant, and was beaten by her father, so she ran away to this Indian school for protection. The school protected her, and helped to reach through her self-imposed isolation. She liked an Indian at the school and offered to sleep with him. He told her that she was an anybody, she would sleep with anybody, but he wanted her to know that he loved her without any demands, that he loved her because she was somebody, and he would not sleep with her. Of course he got killed by the hicks of the town. Funny how the world can steal the few moments of joy that this person had.  I could relate to that part of the movie because at that time I was an anybody.
  

  
  

  The movie had everything, a hero, close minded people, and love. Lots of love portrayed in the movie. I can’t tell you how many times I watched that movie. It spoke so clearly to my heart. It is funny but I think I kept struggling through all my life, looking for love, that kind of agape love the movie portrayed at that school. And finally after 40 years I found it in the one place I had rejected when I was 8, in God.

  
  

  God is alive, Magic is afoot by BuffySt. Marie.

  
  

  Well this song is the hymn of my pagan days. We loved that song when I was a member of the neopagan group I used to belong to. (I am not including names now for the group still exists). We would play this song over and over. Any of her songs, Joni Mitchell, and Joan Baez could fit in this. It was so back to the earth, thou art God, and do your own thing. Karma, alternative religions, etc. Really like in Romans were we worshipped the creation rather than the creator.

  
  

  The Potter’s Hand. Shout to the Lord, Breath, or any praise and worship songs. Now my desire is to draw closer to the Lord, and these songs are bittersweet to me. I want so much to have that close relationship with God, but even though my head knows that this is what I have due to my salvation and the promises of the Bible, I often feel that I am still looking for that agape love in my heart. There is still a lot of healing that has to occur before I can fully grasp the love promised in these songs.

  
  

  Hope you enjoyed this essay, challenging as it was to pin it down to a few songs.

  
  

  Heather

  • 6:52 am
  • 13 Comments