the consequence of DNA

Photo by Natalie Schlegel

I must be feeling more comfortable being imperfect in front of an audience, because I've mustered up the courage to share one of Lola Rain's original songs. I have to preface it by stating that this was a one-take, rough draft that I never went back to edit so it is highly imperfect (gulp). The guitar is totally off, and I don't want to even discuss the vocals because with only one take of the song I'm left completely vulnerable and feel quite self-conscious about it. Enough self deprecation though.....you can use your imagination to fix all the flaws and pretend it's perfect. I'm hearing myself stamp this disclaimer onto a piece of my artwork, by the way, and all I can think of is the quote I ended yesterday's blog entry with: "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong (Joseph Chilton Pearce)." I need to suck it up and work through my fear of being wrong!

About the song: To listen to the song, go to my tumblr page. The song is posted under the November 19th entry. I have been trying to figure out how to add a music player to my blog or within a blog posting all day today, and it's been maddening! I have tried a handful of different music hosting sites and music players and cannot get it to work. Grr. If anyone knows how to do this, leave me a comment!! Please and thank you.

More importantly, I always love to provide some background on my music a la VHI Storytellers. Personally, when I listen to a song I'm listening to the lyrics, feeling the emotion, analyzing the words, and wondering where it all came from. Like a lot of my artistic expression, I found that when I began to write music it was an outlet for my darker feelings and thoughts. The very first song I wrote was super peppy and upbeat, but after that my music began to mirror the difficult pieces of me that had always been locked away and numbed out. Penning the lyrics was an emotional and psychological purging for me, and performing them provided SUCH a release! I had always struggled to communicate or even recognize my pain, but when my guitar was in front of me the words floated up from an inexplicable, mysterious place as if they'd waited all their lives to be sung. It was exactly what I needed. At any rate, this song was written a few months after I learned how to play the guitar when I was in my dark and tormented phase:)

The Consequence of DNA is about my struggle with my inherited genes that have tormented me. However, it's more than physical strands of DNA (nature) that I'm referring to--it's the nurture part of me, the learned behaviors and psychological maladies (such as the good old GAD, my anxiety that I discussed a few days ago). In the past, these things left me feeling trapped in a life I did not want. I will say it bluntly and succinctly: I was raised by an alcoholic mother. The song is fairly straightforward (I think?) once you have that information. It's a large topic, which is why I'm leaving it simple (for now). As a side note, though, I'm currently toying with the idea of writing a book about alcoholism from the perspective of a girl who was surrounded by it all her life, but (thankfully and gratefully!) was never afflicted with the disease herself (only the learned behaviors, thank god for Al Anon!).

Let me know what you think of the song (lyrics below)!

The Consequence of DNA

Can't get outta my head

Can't get outta my bed

apathy is wrapping around me

serpentine and laughing

wish I could talk to myself

put these neurons on a shelf

The consequence of DNA

thought I killed it yesterday

head is climbing up the walls

emotions gushing waterfalls

heart descending to the floor

soul is pleading nevermore

Can't get outta my head

cant' get outta my bed

sabotage is wrapping around me

serpentine and laughing

wish you could just let me be

but I'm my only enemy

The past is creeping in again

just as I began to mend

ghosts are taunting their long reign

voices driving me insane

wanting off this island now

but mama never taught me how