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.
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:
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:
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 dreamAnd 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.
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