Teacher Monsters/Guardian Angels, Part II

TEACHMNS
This is the next song in the series of songs I'm writing about a fucked up school. This week's entry will require some unpacking. In short, it is a song about a woman who has these guardian angels, who were supposed to protect her from bad things the teachers might do to her at that fucked up school. But then those angels couldn't find her.

And here's last week's song if you turn it around backwards:
Weird teacher monsters

If you didn't catch the entry from a few weeks ago, scroll down to the bottom for the rest of the story of what this album's about (in short, I'm writing an album about a fucked up school in order to deal with my own fucked up experiences of having been a grad student in the Dartmouth Department of Poopy Psychological and Brain Sciences).

See, on October 21, 2016, I posted a song on this blog, which was about a young woman whose guardian angels couldn't find her when she got wasted at a party. I wrote that song because I'd had a dream about these really nice people who were supposed to protect this one young woman who was a grad student in the Dartmouth psychology department. These people thought of themselves as the woman's guardian angels because they were trying to protect her from bad stuff. In the dream, she got wasted at a party, and then she went missing. The angels couldn't find her, and they were scared because they knew she might be in some sort of danger.

What I didn't mention in the original 10/21/2016 post was that the dream I got the song from took place at Dartmouth, specifically in the Dartmouth Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I didn't really think much at the time about the setting where the dream happened, but these days, as I'm processing through my experiences of being in the Dartmouth Department of Poopy Psychological and Brain Sciences, I'm beginning to wonder how much that dream spoke to the fucked uppness of being at a place where the combo of the boozy atmosphere and pervy professors put women at risk.


The party took place in Gerry Hall in the dream:

I don't think this building exists anymore because they were gonna tear it down to make way for newer, fancier buildings. But I found this picture online. The first 2 years I was there, the psychology department was housed in 2 buildings, of which Gerry was one (Silsby was the other). I'm not sure why the dream took place in Gerry specifically cuz I didn't spend too much time there. It was for the neuroscience-y folks's labs. But I'd had a couple classes there.

 Here's the original Angels song from 2016.

ANGELS01

So, yeah, I decided to plunk that Angels song into the new album I'm working on and kinda develop that theme of guardian angels losing the woman they're looking after. That's what the new song, above, is about.

In trying to figure out how to describe the pervy professors there in the new song, I used the term "teacher monsters." I came up with "teacher monsters" in the 3rd grade, and it seemed like a good description of yucky teachers for the new song.

Here are the lyrics of the new song:

This is what the teacher said / one more sin and you’ll be dead

Filling up her brain with dread / putting lies inside her head

Guardian angels where are you? She got lost and she don’t know what to do

Guardian angels come save her / From the night of blurry teacher-monsters

It is the story of the guardian angels / who lost their charge in the land of the skulls

In the school where the teachers are monsters from hell / charming all the students so they could not tell

The girl got wasted at an event / but that was not her purpose, it was not her intent

And then she faded slowly, oh fuck, she got bent / and the angels could not find her even though they’re heaven sent

She got wasted in a dream / then the party, it turned mean

And the angels on the scene / could not find her till she screamed

Could not find her anywhere / disappeared into the air

Could not find her then she died / just a little bit inside

Guardian angels where are you? She got lost and she don’t know what to do

Guardian angels come save her / From the night of blurry teacher-monsters

The guardian angels, they got mad at themselves / for losing their charge in the land of demon elves

For losing that girl where the teachers are mean / fucking her up and telling her it’s just a dream

And here are the lyrics of the original song from 2016:

We're her guardian angels (we'll always be right here)
And it got real bad (we'll always be right here)
We came to rescue her (we'll always be right here)
Cuz she got real sad (we'll always be right here)

They couldn't find her!

She got real wasted (we'll always be right here)
And she was a mess (we'll always be right here)
We came to rescue her (we'll always be right here)
And make her blessed (we'll always be right here)

They couldn't find her!

We'll always be right here (we'll always be right here)
We'll always be right here (we'll always be right here)
We're her guardian angels (we'll always be right here)
We'll always be right here (we'll always be right here)

They couldn't find her!

Here's the back-story of what this album is about:
So, yeah, a couple weeks ago, I posted the first song of this album I'm working on. And I mentioned how I'd thought it was just a song about how the school system fucks up kids. But then, on closer inspection, I realized certain aspects of that song were actually about my experience at Dartmouth, in the psychology department where horrible things happen to women (that's where I got my Ph.D.). And, oddly, my brain decided to write that song around the time of that lawsuit becoming public (but the conscious part of me was clueless about the connection until after the fact).

And as I might have mentioned 2 weeks ago, this whole lawsuit thing got me to thinking about what impact that poopy department may have had on me. I had a lot o' work to do on myself, psychologically, after I left that school. Yeah, I wasn't in the best shape. I mean, it's not that I can blame Dartmouth entirely because there were other things going on in my life that were bad - things that didn't have anything to do with Dartmouth. What proportion of the variance of a fucked up life can be accounted for by this or that factor? It's impossible to determine something like that. Nevertheless, it has been productive for me to explore the impact that the poopy Dartmouth psychology department had on me (well, Psychological and Brain Sciences - PBS for short), and writing this album is part of my processing through all this shit.

But I also don't want to cast myself in the role of a victim - that would be stupid. There's kind of a fine line between grieving for bad stuff that happened to you and being all victimy. I gotta be careful to not be the latter of the two.

I also gotta say that I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to go to Dartmouth. There're lots of good things about that school and I met some really good people there. So, yeah, I don't wanna seem all ungrateful or anything like that. I suppose you can find good and bad stuff in most places. 'Tis important to look at both, I suppose.

Asian Sounding Backwards Song

BACANGEL

This is the backwards version of the next song in the series of songs about a fucked up school. This song ended sounding kind of Asian sounding. I guess the forwards-version is kinda Asian sounding, too, but my ears hear the backwards version as being even more Asian sounding. The picture above is my attempt to draw something Asian looking.

Some people might be wondering why there are so many English words in the backwards raps. It's cuz rapping backwards is really hard. The process of figuring out the backwards raps involves me listening to them over and over and over and over until my brain starts to hallucinate them in English. Let me unpack that a little bit.

With the regular parts of the songs, I figure out backwards pronunciations of the words by pronouncing them backwards. For example, the word "like" translates to "kyall." So, I translate stuff, and then I listen to the songs-turned-around-backwards in Audacity - to make sure it matches what I came up with, and revise as needed.

With the rapping, the speech stream is so fast that it would be almost impossible to pronounce the phonetically derived words because they're too tongue twistery. But, when you listen to the backwards raps over and over and over, a peculiar thing happens to your brain that makes performing the raps more do-able.

See, when I listen to them, my brain starts to hallucinate the backwards raps in English. I guess that sounds a little psychotic, but I think it's sort of a normal process - brains have a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli on the basis of what they already know.  Like if you're listening to nonsense syllables, your brain is gonna try to make them into English cuz that's what your brain knows - if you're an English speaker, that is. So, as a result of repeated listenings, my brain starts to hear English words in the rapid stream of nonsense syllables. Shit, I cain't tell if I'm explaining this adequately.

See, okay - the original lyrics of part of the rap are as follows:
It is the story of the guardian angels / who lost their charge in the land of the skulls

This is how I would interpret them backwards on the basis of phonetics:
slucks uth vuh dna'l uth nih groch reth tsall ooH / sledge-nya neh-y-drog uth vuh eerotes uth zih tih

But when I listened to the backwards rap over and over, I heard this (which is easier to pronounce):

lucks like the man would make George grapes all oose / loosh nay he broke them vuh yer oats specific 

Song About A Fucked Up School

SCHOOL01
Shit, this song has a long story to it, a story that dates back to the early 2000s.

'Kay, see, one night, I got the first verse of the song from a dream. I was all, oh, it's a song about a fucked up school. Then about a week later, I found out that not only the school, but the academic department where I got my Ph.D., were in the news for something really bad.

But, I'm dumb and slow on the uptake, not realizing my unconscious mind had been psychic in coming up with this song. (Y'know, anticipating my school's fucked up academic department being in the news and writing a song about a fucked up school). (I'm not sure if I'm gonna mention the name of the school or not. I gotta examine my motives before I reveal what school it was). Yeah, I was slow on the uptake, not realizing this song was all psychic, and as such, I thought I was writing a song about how the school system fucks up kids.

But then, when I listened to it later that night, I realized, oh shit, this song's about Dartmouth! (Whoops, there, I named it). (That's where I went to school, yesiree).

(I mean, okay, Dartmouth doesn't have a principal telling people not to run in halls [see lyrics below]. I think the principal-man is a metaphorical principal. Yeah, that's what it is - he's a metaphorical principal.)

As a result of this weird song synchronicity and the stuff in the news, I've been thinking a lot about having been in a fucked up department and how that might have impacted me, psychologically. I mean, nothing incredibly bad happened to me while I was there, but I also can point to ways in which being there wasn't good for me.

As a result of all this thinking and stuff, I decided to write an album about a fucked up school and base it on the department where I got that old Ph.D. of mine. I dunno how long this album'll be. Yeah, I'm not sure. Poopity pooops.

Weird School Song
This is last week's song if you turn it around backwards.

The lyrics are:

The Beast has come / the day is done

The school got rules / and I think they’re dumb

The school has turned / you into gas

Oh fuck you’re burned / Now it’s time for class

And the principal is here / telling us the rules are clear

Do not run inside the halls / in these hallowed sacred walls

I do not want to go to school

It’s the land where they have made up some stupid dumb rules

Where they bleed your brain dry, and it makes you want to cry

And they fill your head with lies, so you’re stupid till you die

Joy to the world if the school had burned down

It’s a stupid dumb fantasy that takes away your frown

But the truth is that it goes the other way around

The school has burned you down to the ground

The school has turned / you into ash

Oh fuck, you’re burned / in just one flash

And the principal is here / telling us the rules are clear

Do not run inside the halls / in these hallowed sacred walls

Backwards Song About a School

BWSCH00L

This is the first backwards version of a song from a new album I've started working on. It's an album about a fucked up school.