The Day the Music Died

I remember the first time I heard the Clash with a clarity that I’m sure rivals the memories my parents have of hearing of JFK, MLK, or Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations.  My young life was irrevocably affected by this culture shift as I’m sure my parents’ lives were by theirs.

If I could type with my eyes closed I would do so to recall the exact details of the event.  I was in grade 7.  It was January 1981 and I was in Bon Accord Junior High in Bon Accord, Alberta.  We had an inside lunch that day, probably because the temperature, with wind-chill was most likely somewhere in the vicinity of -30 or -35 and the school board didn’t want to get sued for allowing their students to succumb to frost bite.  I had a cool teacher that year; a young, new teacher, Miss Albrecht.  She allowed us to use a turn table so we could bring in records on inside days.  We just had to agree and take turns on the music so there was no “fighting” for the use of the record player.

Agreement on music that year was actually pretty easy.  Who didn’t want to listen to Back in Black¸ Dirty Deeds, CODA, or The Long Run?  There was something decidedly wrong with you if you didn’t like ACDC or Led Zepplin or The Eagles in 1981.  Hell, we even let Bob Seger have a turn on the table.  Really, there was only 1 rule – NO DISCO!  I think Brent Pawluk made that rule and he was the one who spun the wax – no one could get near it.  He was our lunch hour DJ.

He was the lunch hour DJ who, tired of the ACDC and the Zepplin, he brought in the record, imported from England, he got for Christmas that year – either he ordered it with xmas funds or someone had the foresight to know it was something he would like.  Either way, Brent brought London Calling to our lunch hour music sesh on a frigid January afternoon and changed my life forever.

When those now infamous riffs, the opening to the title track, hammered into my head I was instantly intrigued with the sound.  I had never heard anything like it and never knew I needed to.  I was a Tom Petty fan already and knew I loved raw guitar sounds.  The first time I heard Joe Strummer’s guitar I knew I had found a music that was me. A music separate from my parents, separate from Elvis and The Beatles, even separate from The Stones whom I loved so much. 

This music was mine and mine alone.  It was angry and determined and rebellious in a way that Elvis and The Stones only wished they could be and Zepplin and The Beatles never could be.  The songs brought up important social issues like racism, classism, and the impact on society of greed and consumerism. 

What our parents taught us was bullshit, according to The Clash and other punk bands.  The punks looked bad ass, had great hair and makeup and were all about fucking shit up and making the world better.  There was no patience for sit-ins and pot smoking of the hippy generation.  The punks were going to force change or light it all on fire so they could star anew.

I wanted that kind of rebellion.  I wanted to hold the Molotov cocktail in the new Revolution, I wanted to fight along side the Sandanistas, and force the rich to take care of the poor.  I wanted government to stop bullying the sick, the old, and the mentally ill.  I wanted the world to take responsibility for the fucking mess it had made of the world I inherited!  I was sick of feeling afraid of the looming nuclear apocalypse and I wanted a guarantee that when I graduated from uni I would have a job – if I wanted one.

The deeper I went into the music, stories, and legend of Joe Strummer and the Clash, the more I learned that this music, this band, and this man was everything I wanted, all of those things I listed – and much, much more.

Some 30 years after my first hearing of London Calling and 10 years after the death of Joe Strummer, I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this band and this man were/are the only band that matters.  They/he is/was my voice, my platform, my words.  I have the fuel and the strength to be what my husband has dubbed me: “a righteous warrior” because in Grade 7, on a frigid January afternoon, Brent Pawluk brought a record to school and said to me:  “hey, I have a record I want you to listen to because it’s fucking cool and I think you’d like it.”

Thanks, Brent.

Thanks, Miss Albrecht.

And

Thanks Joe/John.

I don’t want to imagine what would have happened to me if you hadn’t saved me from Disco.

Blessed be all of you…lots of kids thank you.

"Banishment" by Sassoon and my trades kids.

It’s the time of year when we remember the dead…All Hallow’s Eve, All Soul’s Day, Remembrance Day. 

For those of us who have the gift/curse of intuitive connections to those on the other side, this time of year is a violent pendulum swing between inspiration and despair – the pain of living without those we have lost, the pride of having them connected to us in some way, and the gratitude of having known them at all. 

The thresholds between the worlds are so thin right now that it is not unusual to dream of, hear, or feel those spirits we wish to reach out to.  For this I am thankful.

So, with that in mind I have chosen my first poem to share here.  It is from this poem I have lifted the name of my blog..

Banishment

I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.

The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.

Siegfried Sassoon

There are certain pieces we stumble across in our lives:  music, art, poems, or places that reflect our inner selves in a way that we could not do.  This poem is one such piece for me.  I stumbled across it this summer whilst reading the first half of Siegfried Sassoon’s biography.  The last three lines were placed in context of Sassoon’s protest against the war, to the shock and embarrassment of many of his friends.  When I read the line “…Love drove me to rebel…” I gasped.  How succinctly he has put my whole life philosophy! 

Everything I have done in my life that has been an act of rebellion has been for the love of someone or something.

In my career it has been for the love of the kids I teach.  My love has landed me on opposite sides of many of my colleagues and has caused me to stand nearly alone on many issues – especially when it comes to dealing with kids who are more challenging.

In my life it has been loving whomever I love with no remorse.  This has cost me connection to my family.

So, you see, when I step against something or someone it is because of my love for the thing opposite – noble reason to rebel, I think.

I immediately saw the connection between myself and my trades kids – I felt, by the end of the last school year, that we had been through hell and back together with the loss of our beloved D. 

Now that I have had to leave them, this poem feels even more real to me.

Allow me to explicate:

“I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.”

The banishment of which Sassoon speaks is, in his mind, of his own making – he felt as though he had abandoned his men when he protested against the war and was sent to Craiglockhart as a “mental case.”  He felt as though his actions cost him his connection to his men.

I, too feel as though I have walked away from my “boys” - the boys who crossed into my heart and made me so proud to be in theirs.  We walked a harsh, painful road together, continue to walk together, into the darkness of anguish we could not understand and still do not fully understand.  I took on their defeat and tried so hard to make them understand that they are so much more than they feel they could ever be.  I am proud of who they have become in the face of the challenges of their lives because I am one of them.

I scream to whom ever will hear me about what they need – how they need to be supported to succeed.  I rant and alienate myself from my colleagues.  I rage to admin – local and upper – to try and get these boys what they need because if any kids in the district deserve a break, they do.

“The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.”

“The darkness” that is telling “how vainly I have striven to free them from the pit where they must dwell in outcast gloom…” is, for me the fact that I have chosen to step away from the place for a while.  The grief and the power of memory have made my ability to be present in that space almost impossible.  I had to admit to myself that I just couldn’t do it any more because the darkness was too much.

For me the beauty is in the last 3 lines.  Even though I have had to step away, I know that “Love drives me back to grope with them through hell; And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.”  I will find, like Sassoon did when he returned to his “boys” in the trenches, my “boys” will forgive me and welcome me back.  I will “stand forgiven” to myself in return.

Those “boys” mean the world to me and always will.  I have an immeasurable love and respect for those kids that only those who have worked with similar kinds of kids can know.  When you fight through something “shoulder to shoulder” with someone you can’t help but be transformed by them.

I have been transformed by my trades “soldiers.”

What saved me...1st 5 of my Top 10

So, how did I survive that?  Why am I not crazy or dead?

Here is the first half of the list of things/people that saved me: 

#1.  Saw an Angel:

I think it was during the summer I stayed with my grandparents to help my grandma clean the high school.  I was around 5 or so.  I was sleeping in the bed facing my grandmother’s bedroom door.  I remember, very clearly stirring and wakening because I saw a light…the light woke me up.  I opened my eyes and saw, on the landing at the top of the stairs, outside of the doorway…an angel.

 It looked very similar to this but it stood sideways.  It raised it’s hand to me and then disappeared.  I have shared this story with many people.  Some believe me, some do not. 

During my time in therapy and during my studies for my substance use counselling certification I came to understand that what saves many, many people from total despair and self-destruction:  the faith that some source greater than ourselves protects us from unseen harm real or imagined.  For some people this is “God,” for others it is a sense of ancestral spirit, and for still others it is a connection to energies outside of themselves from some other source. I remember hearing stories of abuse survivors who connected themselves to “fairies,” toys that came to life, or images in wall paper that would comfort them and protect them during abuse episodes. Our brain is truly miraculous.

So, I guess, ingredient #1 or one ingredient for resilience is:  feeling of connectedness to a greater energy, power, source that you believe, with all that is in you, it will protect you…save you – especially if you are a child going through trauma.

#2.  Music:

 – this one is going to have it’s own blog post….it shows up twice on my list. Lol.  Music would have been #1 on the list but I have never shaken the image of that angel in the doorway. 

Music has, however, remained with me as a way of crawling out of soul crushing despair from as long as I was able to choose my own music. 

I remember very clearly sitting in the dark basement listening to music, rocking in our old crushed velvet rocking chair, feeling as if my heart would never be the same.  Back then

(I think I was 10 or 11) Elton John, the Eagles, and Elvis made me feel better.  The only albums I knew how to buy were the mixed K-Tel albums offering the best of whatever top 40 was available to us at the time.  I was not yet old enough to know what music I really liked because it reflected my own taste but my parents and my aunt, who lived with us at the time, had great taste so I listened to what they had.

As I got older and chose my own music I discovered the power of words…again…and started writing out lyrics, posting them on my wall so I could always read them.

To this day my favourite artists are real, raw, and speak truth to power. 

Music has saved my life many, many times.

This video is from the show The Kids from Fame...loved this show.  This is one of the albums that saved me.

  

 The song: "I still believe in me"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#3.  Shame: 

I was too filled with shame to cause any more for my family by killing myself. 

I remember this very clearly:  I was 16, in Germany on an exchange, in excruciating emotional agony, holding a razor, ready to slit my wrists.  All I could think of was that my mother would be furious that I made such a mess. 

Of course I was being silly, my mother would have been devastated had I died in Germany, but in my mind I couldn’t bear to bring more agony to my parents who had been through so much already because of me.  I was getting really tired of disappointing them.  I just wanted to find ways to make them proud of me – and slitting my wrists in a resort communal bathroom in St. Peter-Ording, Germany was not going to do it.  So I started cutting instead. 

I guess a little healthy shame can be life-saving.

#4.  I was, really, too scared to die.

 I had fantasies that I had cancer or some other life threatening disease and always felt sad that I would never have children or get married.  I really wanted all of those things and suicide would take that away from me.  The more I thought about that, the less I wanted to die. 

I was convinced, deep in my heart in spite of how messed up I felt about myself, that someone, somewhere would love me for me – wounds and all. I believed it so deeply that it kept me from killing myself.  I am  so glad  it did.

#5.  Music…

That’s the 1^st half of my top 10 list of what saved me.

I wanna know.  What saved you?

The second half of the list will be up next week.

Thanks.  Blessed be you.

R

Opinion # 1 gazillion 30 trabillion on bullying

We cannot stop bullying with punishment, anger, hatred.  In my experience, if you bring an energy of “anti-” to something you give the power to the very thing you wish to eradicate. (Sorry…Kids in the Hall sketch went off in my head – the Eradicator!).  If we want to get rid of bullying we have to be “for” the opposite of what bullying is: tolerance, love, compassion, and mercy.

Most of the kids I have worked with, and many adults, who have reacted to their personal pain with behaviour that we call bullying have been driven out of the community many, many times because of their behaviour.  All this has done to them is made them hurt more and because they have equated pain with weakness (and in the case of boys – “femaleness”) they have found solace in anger and abusive behaviours.  They don’t know how to be anything else because their behaviour has so repulsed people that they are continually pushed away.  They hurt because they feel, and are, unloved and forgotten and they are unloved and forgotten because they act out their hurt in a way that hurts others.  The knee-jerk reaction of “anti-bullying” campaigns and programs only perpetuates bullying because the very people who need to be drawn into the community with love are being suspended, expelled, cast out, and bullied by the programs designed to end bullying.

Our logical brain cannot wrap itself around the idea of doing what must be done…hit hate with love head-on in spite of, because of, our own personal anger toward the acts of hatred. 

Many of the kids I work with, or have worked with, (many of them boys) have been bullies or have been bullied or both.  Many of these kids have come from a place where they had no one to love it out of them.  They were/are keenly aware of how very flawed they are but they are rarely made aware of their beauty and perfection.  I have watched very aggressive, angry young men soften and learn to be compassionate and caring.  They learned to trust and love because they were loved and trusted in spite of their behaviour.

Last night, as I soaked in my tub, I kept thinking about a horrible image I saw on facebook – an image of a girl who had hanged herself with the caption “Todded” over it.  I kept asking myself “what would make someone do that to someone else?”  How much do you have to hate yourself to prey on other people?  How could I love a kid/person that would think that was funny or ok in any way?

The questions pushed me down the rabbit hole of self-loathing. 

Just try it.  Put yourself into the mindset of someone who would tell someone else they thought they should kill themselves and really mean it.  What is that saying about you?  How much pain and rejection has had to have been in your life for you to feel this? 

How much shame do you feel about your life and your mistakes do you have to feel to wish death on someone who has made mistakes similar or the same as yours?

How many times have we been angry with someone and wished they were dead?  We have all done it.  This doesn’t make us evil – it makes us human.

Now think about how much your anger, shame, pain, loneliness would be reduced if someone knew about how you felt, knew you said those horrible things, did those horrible things, and they loved you anyway.  Don’t you feel softer inside? Don’t you feel like if that one person thinks you are loveable that maybe you are and they are worth changing for? 

Doesn’t love make you wanna be a better person?

Please don’t misunderstand.  Abusive behaviour to others is never ok.  I am not a flakey-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbiya (however it is spelled) kind of person. All I’m trying to suggest is that we can’t get rid of bullying with more abusive, angry approaches.

Also understand that the question of loving the bully out of the person obviously becomes more complicated when we talk about adults.  My experience is with teens – that’s what I need to focus on.  Also, it’s kind of a no-brainer that the earlier we start working with people to try to change their behaviour, the more likely we are to actually instill change.

Kids who bully other kids to death don’t need jail, they need someone to hear their stories and to love them into compassion – for themselves first and others second because at the heart of a bully is self-loathing and loneliness.