30 Days of Truth, Day 13 : A Band That Has Gotten You Through Some Tough Days. Write A Letter.

Oh, for goodness’ sake, “write a letter”?  To my favorite band?  I’m fifteen, now??!!

Fine.

I will write a letter to the lead singer of one of my favorite bands ever, Everclear, only because this post requires it, and because he wrote all of their songs, as far as I know.  Except for the cover of Brown Eyed Girl which I hated anyway.

Dear Art:

So, you’re this big rock star who wrote all these great songs inspired by abandonment as a child and a prolonged struggle with drugs and I’m just this housewife who has led a relatively privileged life.

How do a person like you and a person like me ever begin to intersect?

I’m not sure.

I just know this.

There were times in my life when people told me to stop being so sensitive… that I didn’t smile enough… and demanded that I should just go with the flow.  They wanted me to pretend that the dysfunction that tore them up wasn’t real, and that it was a figment of my imagination.

I started to feel crazy, like, you know, maybe it is just me… maybe I’m just abnormal.

You wrote this:

Tell me why you want to be blind
I don’t want to be normal like you
I know now every day
I get closer to the place inside
Where I can be normal too

And, then, I didn’t feel so alone.  I still repeat these lyrics to myself every now and then when I get asked to just let it alone.  I will not let it alone… because I never want to be that kind of normal.

Then, there were times where I felt utterly victimized by the pressure of having to live up to everyone’s expectations.  You slapped me in the face with a cold dose of reality.

You say they taught you to read and write
Yeah they taught you how to count
I say they taught you how to buy and sell your own body by the pound
I think you like to be their simple toy
I think you love to play the clown
I think you are blind to the fact that the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down

As we grow up, we realize that there are two worlds in play around us.  There is the world of should have been and the world of… of is.  Some people want to live in that should have been place, the place where we still idolize the people who brought us up and believe that they never, ever make mistakes.

I choose to live in the world of is.  I find that the love is purer there.  Because if you can love someone, warts and all as they say, then you truly love them.  Love that lives in the world of  “should have been” seems full of empty promises.

Promises mean everything when you’re little
And the world is so big
I just don’t understand how
You can smile with all those tears in your eyes
When you tell me everything is wonderful now

And, when it all seems too dark to deal with, too much pain too bear, you take this poetry and you set it to funky rythyms and almost pop-like riffs … and when the music and lyrics come together, they make … well, they make life.

Sad and painful, yet engaging and sweet.  There is beauty inside the pain, pain inside the beauty.  There is hope within the sadness, sadness inside the hope.  And it’s all just incredibly worth it.

I sit alone in the back yard
Wishing I could be inside
Just the sound of my little girl laughing
Makes me happy just to be alive…

Yes, you’re an ex-junkie rock star, and I’m just a Volvo driving soccer mom (who by the way, is not a Republican, stereotype much?), but there were times, especially in my early 20s, when I thought you were the only person who really knew me.

So, thanks for that.

P.S. You sound nothing like Nirvana.  It just made me want to beat the tone deaf losers who said that with a stick whenever people said that in the early 90s.  Not that Nirvana is not awesome.  But they’re a different kind of awesome.

For your listening and viewing pleasure.