Let's forget that polygamy thing ever happened, shall we? (I picture a drunk Burt Reynold's-type slurring that to a weathered, pill-popping Lonnie Anderson-type). Today's word is psalm.
Psalm has two definitions really. One means a sacred song or a hymn and the other means a prayer in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament.
Boys and Lights, or Bebe Gun is an Unintentional Racist
From the age of 6 until the age of 13, every first Friday of the month, my classes were postponed and I had to go to mass. The whole class would line up, one line of boys and one line of girls, and were herded across the street to the church. Most of the time (and maybe it's just my sentimental memory) it was raining on those days and very dark outside. The streetlights outside of the church walkway were always lit up so that if you squinted your eyes, everything would look blurry and glowing.
Churches (especially Holy Name where I went to school) always make me think of lights. The streetlights on the way to church, wet and blurry, and the lights and candles inside the church. Once we filed in and were seated in the pews boy/girl/boy/girl/boy/girl, I'd look up at the ceiling, orantely decorated with gorgeous bas relief carving and bright Roman colors--my own little miniature Michelangelo. I was mesmerized by the lights and would spend most of the time staring up and squinting to make the tiny lights way at the top of the ceiling next to the angels and the lambs and the frills seem twinkling like stars.
When I wasn't staring at tiny lights at church, I was talking to boys. I still have a soft spot in my heart for funny boys and I think this is why. The boys who sat next to me always knew they could make me laugh very easily and would relentlessly push me over the edge until a teacher scolded us or separated us into different rows.
From age 11 on, all of the boys in my class were metalheads. My best friend E and I started listening to heavy metal around that same time too, partly because we were feeling disenchanted with the whole popularity game going on over in the girls' half of the recess yard and partly because we had crippling crushes on all of the metalhead boys. We decided to ditch our Paula Abdul and MC Hammer tapes and replace them with Slayer, Black Sabbath, Anthrax and Guns N' Roses tapes. It was around that time that E and I started referring to ourselves as "psycho metal chicks" or "PMCs" which in hindsight is nothing short of full-on retarded but it was really cool at the time.
The great part about liking "real" music as all the metalheads so aptly put it was that it gave you such an upper hand on all of the other girls. Once E and I realized the easiest way to win the popularity game was to bow out of it, we were free. Now weird was good and freaking people out was our ultimate goal. It also gave us a lot to talk about with the boys. Most of them still thought we were dorks and even went so far as to call us (gasp!) lesbians (haha, good one, dudes) but occasionally one of them would break away from the crowd and discuss with us why Cliff Burton was a better bassist than Jason Newstead or how we kinda like Public Enemy now that they did that collaboration with Anthrax.
A couple years earlier, when I was about 9 or 10, one of those metalhead boys inadvertantly turned me into an Anti-Semite. I know, I know, it sounds crazy but it's true. Right before first Friday mass on a typically rainy and blurry day, we were all sitting in class waiting to be herded over to the church. Our teacher handed out photocopies of the psalms we would be singing that day. The class was restless and buzzing, just waiting to get the hell out of the classroom. I looked over at ****, a boy who always looked a little older than the rest of us. He was always getting into trouble and talking to me in church and teasing me about everything, but in a nice way that made me blush.
**** wasn't paying any attention to the rest of the class but was instead doodling on the back of his psalm sheet with his yes, left hand. I strained my neck forward to see what he was drawing but without seeming to obvious about it. He was drawing some type of symbol which I know I had seen before but I didn't really understand. I just thought it looked cool. I would find out later that day that it was not cool at all. What I had been watching him draw was a swastika on the back of his psalm sheet. Holy moly. He probably saw it on the back of a Deicide album or something. I guess I was an unusually innocent 10 year old.
But that's not the worst part. After I saw his drawing, I decided to try to do one myself on the back of my psalm sheet. It took my all of 3 minutes to complete and the it was time for church.
We lined up, one line of boys and one line of girls, and started the walk over. After we were seated in our pews, I pulled out my psalm sheet and started reading from it, the symbol on the back in clear view to anyone who looked back at me from a seat in front of me. I have no idea why no one in the entire church saw it. I just sang away, psalm after psalm, innocent as the day I was born, holding a freakin' swastika in my hand, unaware of its meaning.
Later on that day, when I got home from school, I sat down at the kitchen table and emptied the contents of my backpack. The psalm sheet fell out onto a mound of books. My mother's boyfriend was cooking dinner and saw the paper flop out of my bag. "Sara, what is this?" he said. "Oh, nothing. I just saw this kid in my class draw it and I thought it looked cool." But the way he said it, I knew I had done something wrong and I think deep down, I knew there was something bad about that symbol but I wasn't really sure what or maybe that the bad part of it had faded away over time.
My mother's boyfriend sat me down that night and lectured my on the holocaust and genocide and all of those big words that a 10 year old is just beginning to understand. I wonder if **** understood them or if anyone sat him down and talked to him about his psalm sheet.
Whenever I think of it now, I feel extremely guilty but also I'm amazed at how much meaning a tiny symbol or a tiny word can hold and how they're bad independent of who uses them or in what context. Now when I see that symbol, I feel scared, guilty, and ashamed of what it means instead of feeling curious and wondering if I could draw it myself. I'll never be that innocent again, to see a symbol as an empty vessel devoid of its meaning.
By the time I turned 12 and started listening to metal exclusively and kissing a lot of those same metal boys in the back of busses, innocence became a much rarer thing to find.
Psalm has two definitions really. One means a sacred song or a hymn and the other means a prayer in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament.
Boys and Lights, or Bebe Gun is an Unintentional Racist
From the age of 6 until the age of 13, every first Friday of the month, my classes were postponed and I had to go to mass. The whole class would line up, one line of boys and one line of girls, and were herded across the street to the church. Most of the time (and maybe it's just my sentimental memory) it was raining on those days and very dark outside. The streetlights outside of the church walkway were always lit up so that if you squinted your eyes, everything would look blurry and glowing.
Churches (especially Holy Name where I went to school) always make me think of lights. The streetlights on the way to church, wet and blurry, and the lights and candles inside the church. Once we filed in and were seated in the pews boy/girl/boy/girl/boy/girl, I'd look up at the ceiling, orantely decorated with gorgeous bas relief carving and bright Roman colors--my own little miniature Michelangelo. I was mesmerized by the lights and would spend most of the time staring up and squinting to make the tiny lights way at the top of the ceiling next to the angels and the lambs and the frills seem twinkling like stars.
When I wasn't staring at tiny lights at church, I was talking to boys. I still have a soft spot in my heart for funny boys and I think this is why. The boys who sat next to me always knew they could make me laugh very easily and would relentlessly push me over the edge until a teacher scolded us or separated us into different rows.
From age 11 on, all of the boys in my class were metalheads. My best friend E and I started listening to heavy metal around that same time too, partly because we were feeling disenchanted with the whole popularity game going on over in the girls' half of the recess yard and partly because we had crippling crushes on all of the metalhead boys. We decided to ditch our Paula Abdul and MC Hammer tapes and replace them with Slayer, Black Sabbath, Anthrax and Guns N' Roses tapes. It was around that time that E and I started referring to ourselves as "psycho metal chicks" or "PMCs" which in hindsight is nothing short of full-on retarded but it was really cool at the time.
The great part about liking "real" music as all the metalheads so aptly put it was that it gave you such an upper hand on all of the other girls. Once E and I realized the easiest way to win the popularity game was to bow out of it, we were free. Now weird was good and freaking people out was our ultimate goal. It also gave us a lot to talk about with the boys. Most of them still thought we were dorks and even went so far as to call us (gasp!) lesbians (haha, good one, dudes) but occasionally one of them would break away from the crowd and discuss with us why Cliff Burton was a better bassist than Jason Newstead or how we kinda like Public Enemy now that they did that collaboration with Anthrax.
A couple years earlier, when I was about 9 or 10, one of those metalhead boys inadvertantly turned me into an Anti-Semite. I know, I know, it sounds crazy but it's true. Right before first Friday mass on a typically rainy and blurry day, we were all sitting in class waiting to be herded over to the church. Our teacher handed out photocopies of the psalms we would be singing that day. The class was restless and buzzing, just waiting to get the hell out of the classroom. I looked over at ****, a boy who always looked a little older than the rest of us. He was always getting into trouble and talking to me in church and teasing me about everything, but in a nice way that made me blush.
**** wasn't paying any attention to the rest of the class but was instead doodling on the back of his psalm sheet with his yes, left hand. I strained my neck forward to see what he was drawing but without seeming to obvious about it. He was drawing some type of symbol which I know I had seen before but I didn't really understand. I just thought it looked cool. I would find out later that day that it was not cool at all. What I had been watching him draw was a swastika on the back of his psalm sheet. Holy moly. He probably saw it on the back of a Deicide album or something. I guess I was an unusually innocent 10 year old.
But that's not the worst part. After I saw his drawing, I decided to try to do one myself on the back of my psalm sheet. It took my all of 3 minutes to complete and the it was time for church.
We lined up, one line of boys and one line of girls, and started the walk over. After we were seated in our pews, I pulled out my psalm sheet and started reading from it, the symbol on the back in clear view to anyone who looked back at me from a seat in front of me. I have no idea why no one in the entire church saw it. I just sang away, psalm after psalm, innocent as the day I was born, holding a freakin' swastika in my hand, unaware of its meaning.
Later on that day, when I got home from school, I sat down at the kitchen table and emptied the contents of my backpack. The psalm sheet fell out onto a mound of books. My mother's boyfriend was cooking dinner and saw the paper flop out of my bag. "Sara, what is this?" he said. "Oh, nothing. I just saw this kid in my class draw it and I thought it looked cool." But the way he said it, I knew I had done something wrong and I think deep down, I knew there was something bad about that symbol but I wasn't really sure what or maybe that the bad part of it had faded away over time.
My mother's boyfriend sat me down that night and lectured my on the holocaust and genocide and all of those big words that a 10 year old is just beginning to understand. I wonder if **** understood them or if anyone sat him down and talked to him about his psalm sheet.
Whenever I think of it now, I feel extremely guilty but also I'm amazed at how much meaning a tiny symbol or a tiny word can hold and how they're bad independent of who uses them or in what context. Now when I see that symbol, I feel scared, guilty, and ashamed of what it means instead of feeling curious and wondering if I could draw it myself. I'll never be that innocent again, to see a symbol as an empty vessel devoid of its meaning.
By the time I turned 12 and started listening to metal exclusively and kissing a lot of those same metal boys in the back of busses, innocence became a much rarer thing to find.
posted by xxxbebegunxxx at 8:47 AM
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