Precious Things

Thirty Day Song Challenge, day 1: Your Favourite Song.

This song found me about three and a half years ago when, disenchanted with religion and foraying into feminism, I was uncertain of everything. It was the first Tori song I ever heard and consequently the one that will always have the strongest hold over me. It is beautiful, powerful and melancholy. I listened to this song for weeks before even letting the rest of the album play out. It’s very difficult to pick a favourite song, so I’m amending this first one to a song that has had the greatest impact on you, spoken to you like nothing else has, reached a part of you nothing else has quite managed to. In this song I found an ally, something that spoke the words I could not yet articulate, that unleashed the dam of confusion and frustration I was feeling. In a time when I didn’t yet have a voice of my own, Tori’s words spoke for me and to me. I haven’t listened to Precious Things in quite a while now, and I’m sure that at some point I will ‘outgrow it’, but it will always remain a flag post signifying a significant turning point in my life. I love you, Tori!

So I ran faster

But it caught me here
Yes my loyalties turned
Like my ankle
In the seventh grade
Running after Billy
Running after the rain
These precious things
Let them bleed
Let them wash away
These precious things let them break
Their hold over me

He said you’re really an ugly girl
But I like the way you play
And I died
But I thanked him
Can you believe that
Sick holding on to his picture
Dressing up every day
I wanna smash the faces of those beautiful boys
Those christian boys
So you can made me come
That doesn’t make you Jesus
I remember
Yes in my peach party dress
No one dared
No one cared
To tell me where the pretty girls are
Those demigods
With their nine-inch nails
And little fascist panties
Tucked inside the heart
Of every nice girl
These precious things
Let them bleed
Let them wash away
These precious things
Let them break
Let them wash away

It’s kind of a shame (cos I did like that dress)

And she shall be called woman

Recently I was accused under the cloak of humour of being a pretentious Melbourne University post-modernist. How did I manage to get that title? I wondered, after being raised in a conservative Christian family and attending a sheltered Christian school both of which maintained fairly fundamental views on every topic from creation to conversion? Well apparently this has happened in the space of two short years of brainwashing under the secular system. But I think it would have happened anyway; I’ve always questioned everything I’ve been taught about religion. Even in year eleven legal studies when we studied marriage and had to discuss the Biblical rules about sex and marriage, I couldn’t accept a piece of paper legitimising the carnal act. After two years of quiet rage, with the help of various people who are more articulare and insightful than myself, I recognise the source of this justifiable anger.

 

 

I know some of my friends have simmered with quiet frustration watching the race to the altar that occurs amongst Christian’s from the age of about eighteen onwards. Why? Because it’s plain stupid when you have the rest of your life to find a partner be fruitful and multiply. But we all know the Christian view on sex and why they’re all rushing down the aisle; set with a legal acknowledgement of their union, our barely-out-of-high-school Christian couples now have permission to shag. Oh, joy.

 Don’t get me wrong; I can see the good side of this rule. It seems ideal in a perfect world: finding your one man (or woman) and living happily ever after – no fucking around necessary. Or at least that’s what they say. But I have always felt there has to be some deeper reason behind this absolute insistence on virgin weddings. Thanks to Tori, Stu and Gender Studies, I think I might have figured it out.

 I was lucky enough recently to have one of those classic conversations where the ingrained nature of religion really hits you. Say something provocative like “I don’t believe in marriage” around a group of Christians and it’s not hard!

“What? You don’t believe in marriage? Don’t you want to have sex?” Er, I think there’s a way around that Sherlock. But never mind. The conversation followed was more interesting. 

Q. Why do you think you have to be married to have sex?

A. Because the Bible says so.

Q. Why does that mean you have to do it?

A. Because the Bible is God’s word.

Q. Why would God make a rule like that?

A. Because he has your best interests at heart.               

 

 So I’ve been thinking a lot about this and realising how much the Bible is a product of patriarchy written by men under a system which, among other things, attempts to subjugate women and keep them under control. Why?

 

Because woman is man’s one weakness and her sexuality her one form of power over man. This is revealed in countless bible stories and other myths. In Jewish and Greek mythology the fall of man comes through a woman; in the Bible this is Eve, in Greek myth it is Pandora. Pandora was irresistible to men because of her beauty and yet she was deceptive, for she carried with her the box (or jar) that contained all the evils in the world if opened. Thus, the beautiful and sexually desirous woman became the downfall of man. Similarly, Eve in the Garden of Eden tempts Adam to eat the fruit which brings evil into the world. Damn. So from the start woman is to blame, but even more she is mans Achilles heel. Don’t worry though, God fixed this problem from the word go through creating marriage; the institution in which gender inequality is first established. Shortly after the apple incident God tells Eve that having kids is going to hurt and that ‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’ (Genesis 3.16). In other words, you’re not going to get away with this again. The rest of the Bible follows in this same vein, depicting women who use their sexuality as a form of power over men as evil. Delilah is a fine example; the prostitute who seduced Samson and became his downfall,  ultimately causing his death and the death of many others. This woman did not conform to having sex within the institution God set up for it; the patriarchal system. Sexually aware women, first Biblically and then throughout history, are demonised as devious, tainted, unclean and sinful, while the virgin Mary is the ultimate example of virtue and is upheld as the ideal model of woman; her purity was the very reason she was chosen to give birth to the saviour. In this way, the nature of woman as good or evil is related solely to her sexuality. Sexually transgressive women are made outcasts in order to scare other women into staying pure. That is into coming under the submission of a husband and having sex only within marriage so that the patriarchal framework – family, of which the father is the head, remains intact. Sex outside of marriage is forbidden, particularly to women, as a means of control. If the family structure functions as a miniature version of society with the husband / father in charge and in possession of his wife and children, then society as a whole remains patriarchal; men stay in charge. If marriage and family fall apart, father’s are no longer the head of the household and of their wives. On a larger scale this means that patriarchy loses control of the reigns. The solution? To confine sex as an act to be done solely within marriage, the institution that prescribes men as the boss. Sex outside of this patriarchal institution is depicted as dangerous and the women who instigate it are evil adulteresses and seductresses who lure men into sin. This myth generates the belief that women should feel ashamed of their sexuality, viewing the unchaste body as ‘a source of embarrassment….an object of disgust.’ Deuteronomy even describes a woman who has sex outside of as being punishable by death: “if no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”(Deuteronomy 22:20). So men are aware of women’s source of power over them and to combat this women are made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, to have sex only when men are sure they’re in control (in marriage), or otherwise risk social rejection and punishment. Or at least they were a few thousand years ago. But I’m pretty sure this is still going on today. And if the rate that I’m seeing nineteen year olds purchasing wedding dresses is any indication, the purity myth is still in force. And patriarchy still holds the reigns. Because God said so. 

all up the seething coast

Eleven days since my last entry. Not because I’ve had nothing to say. My head has been pounding with thoughts, running all through the night til those thoughts manifested themselves in bizarre dreams. In the last week I dreamed that I married my best friend from high school. I dreamed I was pregnant. I dreamed my dad, my mum and I had a screaming match about the aforementioned two events. I dreamed I saw about a hundred versions of my dog Oscar running down the street, but they had blue, grey, white and black coats. I dreamed I forgot to open the shop at Eastland and slept all day. In the end I decided to run away.

Sometimes you get to the end of your rope unexpectedly. On Sunday, I thought I had a good couple of metres to go, but the frayed ends suddenly began to unravel in my hands. I realised I needed to escape. I had to get far away from the frantic pace of the metropolis, from crawling up and down the traffic-ridden highway to work in every stifling, enclosed zoo of consumerism in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. In those regulated climates, it doesn’t matter what the weather is outside because it’s always a mild t-shirt and jeans appropriate 21 degrees. You substitute daylight for fluorescent lights, fresh air for the air-con, real nourishment for the food court, genuine conversation for a mass-produced ‘how’s your day been?’ and in the end you start to rot away. You close your eyes at night and all you can see are a thousand shoe-boxes in numerical order. That’s when you realise you’ve forgotten what it looks like outside.

Later, when the crawling traffic begins to fall away behind you, and you begin to pass fence posts and cows and hills, you start to feel it. A little more alive, that is. Like perhaps somewhere, there still does exist a space where you can breathe a little more freely, where you can think, or you can choose not to think. Where you can just be, for a little while.

So I went to the beach, because I wanted to remember what it felt like to be free. I let the salty breeze tangle my hair and I didn’t worry about what it looked like. I lay on the damp sand, reading about the Source and the Divine and the Great Mother.

I rolled up my jeans and stuck my feet in the icy waves, feeling the cold ache right to my bones. I thought about the tides and the moon pulling them back and forth and how the earth both changes and remains the same and will always be that way. I hopped across rocks in my sneakers and didn’t worry when I splashed into unexpected rock pools; miniature universes of their own.

I picked up crabs and watched them scuttle across the palm of my hand. Slowly, my imagination began to crawl out of it’s hiding place. I turned to face the wind with arms outstretched and imagined it ripping me off my feet and carrying me away. I smiled at the feeling of sand still stuck between my toes at the end of the day; a souvenir, a clue.

I stood at the cliff’s edge, I looked across the ocean out to the horizon and let myself be enveloped in its endlessness. I contemplated my own insignificance in the grand scheme. I thought about religion and power and organised societyand suddenly they just seemed like words instead of great hulking oppressors. They seemed, for an instant, unreal, laughable; non-existent except to those who choose give validation to them. All at once I realised I could choose not to. I thought about the rules people make for themselves, rules they try to impose on others through creating a God made in their own image. A discourse that has been constructed to control and demean, to destroy souls. I thought about the way nature quietly resists that control. I thought about how it both comforts and threatens humanity. I thought about how mostly, humanity threatens it. Enough thinking.

I drove home along the coast road, listening to The Cranberries and watching the wind tearing and buffeting the bushes outside. I heard it’s faint roar outside and felt safe in the snug warm space of my car.

* * *

“I am piecing a potion to combat your poison.

She is risen. She is risen.

boys I said

She

is

Risen.”

 

Dancing about Architecture

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” ie. ridiculous, impossible and idiotic.

So began one of my creative writing lectures in the subject “Writing for Real” last semester. The guest speaker, whose name is lost to me, began his hour long speal on music reviewing by contesting criticisms the genre recieves, which are largely encapsulated in this phrase. Describing music in terms of its audible qualities is difficult, just as is verbally describing any of the senses. How do you explain to a blind man what colour is? He has to see it for himself. Well, I agree with nameless guest speaker on this. I am increasingly interested in music writing, but not terribly competent writing about it in a technical way. Last year, I wrote a personal essay about a few episodes in my life that have happened over the last couple of years. Each section had an accompanying soundtrack to it; as in, i described the music I was listening to, how it made me feel and how it related to my life. Well, the feedback I recieved from my tutor went something like “this is interesting, but it lacks punch. I’d like to hear more about the music and less about your life.” Intersting. Perhaps this could be applied across the board to all of my writing. ME. ME. ME. Well, it is difficult to remove myself from my writing, everything I say/type/pen is filterted through my own distracted and critical consciousness. Each thing I say is tainted by my own personal bias. How else can one write? Objectivity is almost impossible to attain. Even percieved objectivity is still self-conscious subjectivity. How does one erase the hand of the author?

Music writing I suspect is just the same. After all, reviewers, no matter how conscious they are of making critical judgements rather than value judgements, are still evaluating their said song or artist through the filter of their own ears and musical tastebuds. After thinking about this excessively last semester, I have come to one conclusion. Screw Objectivity. After all, it is often the most subjective, biased and ridiculously blinkered points of view that get the most attention. The peacemakers, on the otherhand, who try to soften the blow of a bad review with neutral wording end up sounding bland, insincere and unopinionated. Germaine Greer, for instance, says the most utterly ridiculous, biased and subversive things and ends up splashed across the front page of every tabloid. I’m not saying we should all start ripping Mrs Obama to shreds, only that sometimes a subjective opinion can be more interesting than ‘beige wall’ reviewers. Neutrality is overrated, Switzerland.

Back to the topic…..

Despite the fact that I am perpetually on the search for new bands to listen to and it seems like I continue to discover them long after they have debuted. In fact, after going through my boyfriends 300+ CD’s and knowing less than a quater of the bands (most of them 90s British rock), I feel incredibly under-educated about music, despite considering myself to have a fairly broad musical taste. Truth is, I get in my niche`s and not even the lure of Triple J can coax me out of them. I wont stop listening to an album til I’m good and ready. After that, it’ll sit untouched in my pile of CD’s, gathering dust while I move onto the next awesome artist I discover about five years after everybody else. It’s a cycle I’m finding quite impossible to break, actually. Quite embarrassingly, I’d almost never listened to Oasis, Blur, New Order or The Smiths until they were pushed upon me, and subsequently only started raving about them sometime last week, about a decade too late. So, here is a list of my current (but in reality out of date) albums of the month.

A couple of short reviews:

Rilo Kiley Under The Blacklight – I haven’t listened to alot of Rilo Kiley’s other songs, the first one I heard was ‘Portions for Foxes’, featured on Grey’s Anatomy. The other handful of songs such as ‘A better son or daughter’ and ‘Does he love you’, although sung by Jenny Lewis and thus pleasant to listen to, had a whiney teen-punk quality to them that irritated me a little. Under the blacklight in comparison, is flawless. The songs are more upbeat and at the sametime more soulful, the electric guitar leads prominently in nearly all the songs and the range allows Lewis’s voice to be fully appreciated. ‘Silver Lining’, ‘Close Call’ and ‘Under the blacklight’ all have very similar rhythmic qualities, following the same pattern with the chorus being just a few drawn out words. ‘The Angels Hung around’ is a little bit Dixie Chicks because of Lewis’s country lilt, while ‘Monkeymaker’, ‘Dejalo’ and ‘Smoke Detector’ are fun rock songs with suggestive lyrics “I’ve got a tongue if you wanna taste it.. I got a place if your ready to go” & “I was smokin’ in bed… I do the smoke detector”. Overall its a sweet combination of fun rock, really awesome guitar and beautiful soulful singing. It was termed by some shite media site as Rilo Kiley’s “sexiest album ever”, and being ignorant of the others, I won’t disagree!

Ladyhawke – Ok, so I jumped on the Ladyhakwe bandwagon and yes, she is a touch pretentious in the ‘how much can i reference 80s pop culture’ kind of way, but the music is fun. Not to mention catchy. I think I walked around singing “bang bang bang on the wall” for about a week before I managed to slap myself out of it. She’s like The Ting Ting’s; pop for those who are too cool to listen to actual top 40 pop. And better, too. However the start of ‘Back of the Van’ bears a remarkable resemblance to Fleetwood Mac… (maybe that’s why I like it.)

Tori Amos Under The Pink - So, the amazingness of Tori Amos, evident to most for the past decade, only became known to me recently. Infatuated as I was, I wrote my feminist theory essay on both her and PJ Harvey and so doing a short review of this album is going to be difficult! Personally Under The Pink is my favourite album, probably because I feel that the songs are some her most significant. Her lyrics are imbued with the reality of female desire and the consequences for woman who do not conform to fenine social codes, exploring themes such as social rejection, neglect, abuse and rape, as she does similarly in her first album, Little Earthquakes. Amos sees her openess on these issues as a rebellion against the oppression of both religion and patriarchy, discourses which have attempted to silence women and deny them sexual expression, rendering them voiceless passive objects. Amos brings tradtionally unspeakable female desire to light in ‘Icicle’ wher she sings ‘and when my hand touches myself, I can finally rest my head. And when they say take from his body, I think I’ll take from mine instead. Getting off, getting off, while they’re all downstairs singing prayers.’ Here she highlights the construction of the female body as ‘lack’ or absence and in need of purification by a male saviour. My favourite song other than ‘Cornflake Girl’ is ‘God’. The verses begin with ‘God sometimes you just don’t come through, do you need a woman to look after you?’ On the musical side, I don’t think I need to say much other than that Tori Amos is pretty much the most talented and amazing pianist in the modern world, and once you hear her there’s no going back…