“…Take me back to the days…
Of the all night rock and roll…
…What was the name of
that love song you played?
I forgot how it goes,
I don’t recall how it goes…”
“Anchorage
I don't know how I'm feeling about Michelle Shocked...don't know her, just love the song "Anchorage"...saw her on Piers Morgan and she seemed to be suffering...I know...she said some incoherent, conflicted, and even some ridiculous stuff in a concert “sermon” that does not make me feel good, sort of makes me seethe...but what I saw was a suffering person...read some stuff about her and she seems caught between wanting to accept the Bible on a literal level, although, and she might have missed this, it does not say anything about gay marriage, but she hears some preachers and she wants to believe and belong and accept and still belong, and in the Born-Again community, there isn't too much room for that...but her statements--in various articles and quotes from secondary sources, and herself--seem to veer from "I am the biggest homophobe..." to "My support for the LGBT community is strong and has never waivered..." What to make of this?
I think of her name and, reading that her parents sent her to a mental hospital where she received shock treatment, well...maybe there's a hint there...about who she is and why...and although I am deeply troubled by her comments, I can't bring myself to damn her...anyone who can write a song so haunting and beautiful as "Anchorage" and has gone through a troubled, troubled life, well, I just can't damn her. Damning is a damning thing. It damages forever. She seems too fragile and human for damning. And, she is struggling to make something right, from most of what I have read and seen and heard. If she is being a genuine, albeit, somewhat lost, soul, then I can’t damn her. I can be--and am--upset and confused, but I can't damn her. The more I read and hear, the more challenging it gets to make sense of what she wanted to say, why she wanted to say it, who she is, and why she brought the detritus of broken-ness to us, outside of artistry, although she might think it was part of her artistry. I can reasonably say to her, "It was not. You need better boundaries, Michelle, and there are places to go and other kinds of help to get you to see that."
This is where trying to find God gets you in trouble: if you cannot see Beauty in Nature, the music you make, the words you write, then you are missing the everyday miracles you should be embracing. Instead, if you go Messianic, Hubris will bring you down, sure as it did Prometheus. All of us have wings of wax or gossamer. All of us can fly. You gotta have a good altimeter…know if you strive for the Sun, well, you gonna get burned…bring it down a little, Michelle, or a lot…you think you need to preach or screech…well, the dissonance was just too great…and you failed to make it music—music is no minor miracle, girl…no minor miracle…and you have God-given talent...no minor miracle, either.
We can all be hot messes, showing our own bi-polarity on difficult-to-reconcile subjects, but, for the most part, people I know--myself included--try to make sense, stay rational...and she needed more than an encore to do a treatise on "Truth vs. Reality" and its nuances--that's a grad school seminar, right there. I can say, however, that she should not try to be a philosopher, has the right of free speech--as do her critics--and might just grow from this experience that has hurt her, and a lot of us, actually. If for no other reason than her right to free speech--I will not damn her. I believe there is more to her than this. Imagine if we were all judged for one day in our lives!?! Now, if she wants to be the Mother of Christian-Skateboard-Punk-Rockers, I say to her: go find your place, your people, yourself....and God please help you because you are going to need that on your journey through Truth and Reality. In the face of mass exodus…go find your people…there’s something biblical to that…does it appeal? If it doesn’t, you’ll wander around the desert of the 48-, 72-hour news-cycles…maybe you’ll find your sound-bytes in the shifting sands of public opinion…made your mea culpas…they’re out there, too…
And I want to say to her: you walked across that burning bridge, girl…walk it again, get back to your roots, and tell us what’s it like to be a skate-board-punk-rocker: now there’s a question you used to know the answer to…do you remember how it goes? Do you recall how it goes? You want to talk about what’s it like to be you, right now? I don’t want to know. Not until you’re grounded, anchored…anchored down anywhere, in this sphere…Truth and Reality are just too big to navigate, negotiate for anyone, we need a bridge, even if it’s burning, even if we set the fire…’cause, we don’t walk on water, we don’t walk on water…
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