In the second semester of my freshman year in college, we had to discuss this song. I think that was the first time I ever heard an Eminem song, but it wasn’t the last. I think this might be what put the early seed of music therapy in my head.
Look at the 3rd verse:
They say music can alter moods and talk to you
Well, can it load a gun for you and cock it too?
Well if it can, then the next time you assault a dude
Just tell the judge it was my fault, and I’ll get sued
See what these kids do, is hear about us totin’ pistols
And they want to get one, ‘cus they think the shit’s cool
Not knowin’ we’re really just protectin’ ourselves
We entertainers, of course this shit’s affecting our sales
You ignoramus. but music is reflection of self
We just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail
It’s fucked up ain’t it, how we can come from practically nothin’
To bein’ able to have any fuckin’ thing that we wanted
That’s why we sing for these kids that don’t have a thing
Except for a dream and a fuckin’ rap magazine
Who post pinup pictures on their walls all day long
Idolize their favorite rappers and know all their songs
Or for anyone who’s ever been through shit in they lives
So they sit and they cry at night, wishing they die
‘Till they throw on a rap record, and they sit and they vibe
We’re nothing to you, but we’re the fuckin’ shit in their eyes
That’s why we seize the moment, and try to freeze it and own it
Squeeze it and hold it, ‘cus we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they’ll admit it when we’re gone
Just let our spirits live on, through our lyrics that you hear in our songs
And we can
We discussed the power that music can have over a person; or perhaps, the power of music to influence your emotions.
I think the reason that I keep coming back to Eminem is that, number one, he’s really interesting as a storyteller, but also because he’s been through shit and more shit, and even though you might not agree with his views, he’s still here and he’s still fighting.
Have you ever been hated or discriminated against, I have, i’ve been protested and demonstrated
against, picket signs for my wicked rhymes, look at the times, sick is the mind of the
motherfuckin’ kid that’s behind, all this commotion, emotions run deep as ocean’s explodin’,
tempers flaring from parents, just blow ‘em off and keep goin’, not takin’ nothin’ from no one,
give ‘em hell long as i’m breathin’, keep kickin’ ass in the mornin’, an’ takin’ names in the
evening, leave ‘em with a taste as sour as vinegar in they mouth, see they can trigger me but
they’ll never figure me out, look at me now, I bet ya’ probably sick of me now, ain’t you mama,
I’ma make you look so ridiculous now…
That’s from “Cleanin’ Out My Closet.” That’s one of the songs that my bestest friend in the world introduced to me back in my freshman year of college, somewhere after the class experience–or just right around–I can’t remember to tell you the truth. Freshman year was back in 2002/2003. I’m in grad school now btw.
Plus, he’s got seriously good rhymes and rhythms (not exactly the same thing) and he actually says something in his songs.
Unlike some.
Like I said, you don’t have to agree with him, but he’s been through hell and he’s still here, and what’s more, he has something to say about it.
And you look at the thousands of kids and adults on the spectrum, whether they have something to say or not is often irrelevant, since a good many can’t speak, and those who can, it’s not really their strong suit (hi there), but if they did, would they say anything anyways?
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You want it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo,
I think there’s been plenty of times when I should have said, done something, and the fear just clamped over my throat, or I said something, but I couldn’t tell how loud I was being, so no one heard, or no one responded . . .
Or like, you’re having one of those dreams where you’re screaming at the top of your lungs for them to stop doing what they’re doing to you, but no one is listening, and you might as well not be there and not care, but damn it, you care so fucking much. And people tell you all your life that you’re too sensitive and you should just get over yourself, but how can you? When you’re the only one who hears you, you can’t just discount yourself. No one else is listening.
I spent years with myself, just myself.
Because those damn perfect people, those people that everyone likes, the people that are class presidents and scholarship winners and honor students, those students whose smiles are filled with sharp molten darts, those students that rip out your heart and then crush it between their hands, those students, those kids, those people; the people who think they are so damn good–godlike, treating autistic kids/people, and disabled people and people with learning disabilities and poor kids and kids that just don’t have it quite together, they treat those kids/people like trash. Can’t you see the irony here? The teacher looking over you, pissed off ’cause of some damn so-called stupid thing that you did in their eyes, and they’re saying things like, why can’t you be more like ______? How ’bout this, we bring guns to school and make up all that time of NOT being like them?
‘Cause listen, the school system’s fucked up and no one representing the voices of the unheard, and there’s nothing you can do. You have three choices:
Either suck it up. Get treated like shit. Laugh at prisoners who think they have it tough. Try being an “other” kid in a public school system. Try being the kid that the popular ones use to cut down, so they can be taller by standing on the bodies of those sliced down. Trying being an adult in a world that doesn’t recognize your adulthood. Either you look too young or you don’t treat other people like shit, and so people think you’re not just like them and they say, ooo someone else to fuck up. I’d like to see what God says in heaven when we get there. All of these “good” folk, thinking they’ve been doing sooo good sooo long, and then God says, well what about this kid and that kid? And they answer with, who, that dope? You don’t think they actually counted for anything, do you? THEY DID??? Oh shit. Made in your image? Sorry God, you’re not popular enough. I don’t think I can follow you any longer. (I mean seriously . . . *rolls eyes*).
Or kill yourself. You spend every single moment of every single day for years on, no one hearing you when you do complain, keeping it all inside, people treating you like crap constantly, crap is a nice way to be treated even, anything less than active physical/sexual abuse is fine. 2 people have dropped out of my grad program so far. I was thinking that maybe I was still here because my tolerance for crap is pretty damn high. Perseveration anyone? I never gave up because . . . well, I don’t think that I was supposed to, let’s put it that way. I was scared, but suicide was my way out. Get too overwhelmed, no way left to turn? Freaking out every day? Feel like there’s something screaming in your head and skin/nerve endings, and no one to talk to, to really hear you, and you’ve got these memories of things that you wished you could change, because you’re so damn embarrassed, so damn sorry for what should have been but what wasn’t, and to top it off, you’ve got nightmares, and you’ve got homework/responsibilities that keep piling up, and it’s dusk all the time, except for when it’s 3 am, and even the people who said you could talk to them can’t be talked to, because it’s freakin’ 3 am and no one gives a damn then, no daytime people are serious, they don’t mean it, no one means it anything at 3 am, and you’re stuck there in you’re own head, because that’s the only voice that’s constant, and you’re so damn scared of what could happen, and what will happen, and what might happen and what has happened . . . that you’re curled in a ball with your teeth gritted, just trying to ride it out, ride out the fear wave, while your entire body is tensed up and you’re sweating because you can feel your internal demons staring at you and laughing, and you feel like screaming to match the screaming in your head and arms and legs . . . and you think that you’re going crazy, but it wouldn’t matter if you did, because everyone thinks you’re nuts anyway and how would they tell? And what if you went crazy and then everyone thought you were normal and what is sanity anyway? And you think you know the answer, because you think that if you lose yourself totally, then that’s truly insanity, but that’s how they all want to fix you, make you more “normal,” but normal is insanity, because if they change you, then that’s all you have left and there really won’t be any reason to live then, because you’re only living because that’s all you’ve got in life; that, and the pain of life, of fear, of internal hate, of cold chills and hot sweat, of darkness, and of uncertainty and soft facts, the kind that don’t hold up anything, and the world is a world of maybes and somedays and sometimes. And sometimes you feel so crazy that you start laughing and crying at the same time, but no one says anything, even though you start doing this in public, and you wonder how compassionate can people really be if they see something like you hysterically crying and laughing and they just ignore you anyway, and you say to yourself that if that’s what compassion is, then you just don’t really think you need any of that and that’s what you say, but you’re screaming inside because nothing else is there for you to own. So you wonder why people commit suicide? Well I don’t. They do it because it’s the only way out, because life is not worth it; because they’re just so tired of being so damn afraid every single moment of their lives . . .
Or you can do the aforementioned, but take your revenge too and make the world safer by leaving it with a few less assholes. And I don’t recommend that either, because if you do that, you take someone’s life, then you’re just being them too. By that reasoning, almost every single person I went to middle school with was a murderer . . . People think of murder as physical death, but I think that if you take away a person’s sense of themselves, if you steal a person’s soul, if you make someone so miserable that they end up committing suicide later, then you are the murderer. And you can’t keep your hands clean by ending every phrase with, “Oh I was just kidding.” That’s fucked up. Does a serial killer take a gun up to a person’s head and kill them and then just stand over their broken body and say, “Oh, I was just kidding”?
Making someone’s life into crap, making them hate themselves, ignoring another person’s pain, ignoring the fear in their eyes, laughing at their fallacies in a world that only laughs at them, in a world that never lets them laugh, except in crying hysterics, is easily worse than murdering someone. And if you have ever done any of the above mentioned, then I’d be carefully questioning myself if I were you, question what you really are to other people. And what are you really as a person? More than that, what do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you sleep well at night? How do you know that you’re the sane one? They say that those who are insane don’t know it . . . they’re the ones who think they are the sane ones.
I’m not forgetting the Batman one, but this one inserted itself into my brain this morning and I feel the strong need to write it down before it exits my brain.
That said . . .
Meeting Jack
He was small when his sister was born. He watched the world carefully; even though his world consisted mostly of kneecaps, table legs and floor designs. He remembers the day that his sister was brought home. His father and his uncle were at the house, perfecting the room that his sister would stay in. To his relief, they weren’t talking much, but mostly spent the time handing each other mechanical parts and the tools that were used to put them together. He watched discreetly from the hallway, even though his father thought that he was in his room.
When they did finally get into a conversation longer than three sentences, it was as he had suspected; it was about him.
“Chris,” his uncle said, “how do you know that this one will be okay?”
“Jesus, Brad, you of all people should know what happened the last time! I daresay that there will be no mistakes this go around, considering the mud we dragged that other doctor through. Not only will that man never find another job in the medical field, but he’ll also be paying us out of pocket for the rest of his natural life.”
“Do you honestly believe that he did it on purpose?” Brad answered, incredulity tinging his voice.
“He’s one of those damn neo-evolutionists, Brad. He did it on purpose, trust me. ‘Making the world more diverse for tomorrow’s children. Expanding the neurological barriers.’” He said in a sing-song voice, quoting the slogans he had no doubt heard many times before. “God, what a crock. I want to know how having a kid like Jack is going to do anything more than cost the government some pretty pennies after Sue and I are gone.”
“Speaking of him,” Brad said, “aren’t you worried that he might hurt the baby?”
“I doubt he’ll notice the baby. Besides, we keep a pretty good eye on him. He doesn’t like to move that much. If I just set something shiny in front of him, he’ll stay there the rest of the day.”
He had wandered off then, back to his room and its “shiny things,” as his father had put it. He wasn’t angry at his father’s words, or at his uncle’s words. Anger was too loud for him to think about. It hurt his brain. He tried to avoid it.
Later, after his mother and sister had gotten home, and they had gone back to their respective schedules, except his sister who was fast asleep, he decided to sneak in and see her. They told him that his mother was taking a bath and his father was in there with her, talking to her. That was on the other side of the house. They wouldn’t hear him. They rarely noticed him anyway, except when they wanted to. He felt pain at the memory of their choices in times to notice him. It seemed that they almost purposely chose times when they knew he would be completely invested in something and not want to be disturbed. They didn’t notice of course, but there were times that he wondered.
He walked to her room with his eyes closed. He did better when he didn’t rely on his eyes. His other senses tended to be easier to process. Besides, the light in the hallway was too loud, and much too yellow.
He opened the door softly, taking care not to just crash into the room like his parents often crashed into his, even when they thought they were being quiet. He listened closely to the tumblers move in the door knob as he turned his hand one way and then back. When he was perfectly quiet, he could see them move in his mind. When there were others around, he could only feel them in his palm; a sensation he didn’t like, because it itched.
After closing the door behind him, he crept carefully to her crib, sidestepping the diaper bag easily; its position already memorized from watching his father put it down earlier that evening. Read more »
