3:25am March 2, 2015

School newspaper silliness

At least it feels silly now, but at the time I took it as Very Serious Business Indeed.

I wrote a music review article for a student newspaper.

I chose two bands: Cocteau Twins and Enya.

I gave a description of each, then a rating on a scale of 1 to 10.

I think Cocteau Twins got an 8/10 and Enya got a 10/10,

Later, I was wearing a Cocteau Twins hat I got at a concert. (Wow, now that I can crochet, maybe I can do a better rendition of their logo than the hat I got. The hat I got had a somewhat atrocious rendition of a dancer on it, rather than their normal logos which were stylized and swirly.)

And someone asked me about it.

I said they were my favorite band. Which was the truth. Still might be the truth, but I know so many more bands it’s easier to list ten favorites, than to pick one. Some of my current favorite singers, in no particular order:

Elizabeth Fraser (of the Cocteau Twins, my first of only a very very tiny number of celebrity crushes I’ve ever had, when I was like… 11 or 12)
Grace Slick (of Jefferson Airplane)
Lacy J. Dalton
Kathy Mattea
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Lisa Gerrard (of Dead Can Dance – remind me to tell you the story behind that band name, if I don’t soon)
Gwen Avery (OMG don’t get me started, saw her in concert, WOW, greatly saddened by her death)
TR Kelley

If pressed, I could narrow it down to TR Kelley, Gwen Avery, Lacy J. Dalton, Grace Slick, and Liz Fraser. And um… that’s not very narrowed down.

Enya isn’t on that list, though she might have been when I wrote that.

Anyway, the person was perplexed. He’d read my article, and my ratings from one to ten. "If you like Cocteau Twins so much they’re your favorite band, why did you give a higher rating to Enya?“

Well… couple of reasons, not that I’d rate them the same now:

I thought I had to be "objective” in some way, like my own personal taste counted for very little in the ratings, even if they were fine for the written article.
Enya has never hurt my ears, even when overloaded. Cocteau Twins can easily hurt my ears when overloaded.
Enya puts so much effort into production and making her music and voice sound “perfect” that I couldn’t figure out anything “wrong” with it, whereas Cocteau Twins actually made mistakes and never sounded “perfect”.

I felt like I was obligated.

I got so sick of feeling obligated. It was like being tied down, only mentally, not physically. And I couldn’t just break myself out of it, because I couldn’t tell where the expectations ended and I began – at least the part of me that carried out the actions didn’t understand.

There was always a part of me, like a thread going through my soul, that felt very separated from expectations, and sort of… like I was always there, I was always real, I always had my own feelings. But I wasn’t “allowed” to express that, except in roundabout ways very few people could decipher. It wasn’t a choice. I didn’t have rules about dealing with the world the way some auties do – as a moral code, almost, something they like, something that gives comfort – or if I do have that, it’s very different from this involuntarily Frankensteined version. This wasn’t a moral code. This was a hodge-podge of impressions picked up from reactions and situations all around me, formed into something akin to rules, definitely, definitely coming from outside of me.

So that is some explanation for how I could like the Cocteau Twins better than anyone, yet rate them lower than Enya.

Though others may have had some say
In building up their book of rules
I had mine given without want
I couldn’t build one, had no tools
My book has not my name upon it
It feels unlike mine in hand
If not that I relied upon it
I’d let it fall like grains of sand