Maybe I'm Too Grateful

GRATEFL2
In this song about the fucked up school (see below if you don't know what I'm talking about), the teachers are putting pressure on the students to be grateful for being at the fucked up school. The main character (the girl/woman on the left) wonders if she's bein' too grateful, as a result of obeying them.

I s'pose that prompts the question, can you be too grateful for something? I'm not sure. I know listing things for which you're grateful is supposed to be a tool for managing depression, but when people tell me to be grateful, I get all grumpy. It feels invalidating; I mean, if your life is going terribly, it feels stupid to list stuff you're grateful for.

When some high and mighty asshole who has a good life tells someone who has a bad life to be grateful, it feels all condescending. I wanna say, "It's easy for YOU to practice gratitude because everything's coming up roses in your dumb life. Fuck off, asshole! You heard me - fuck off!"

Whoops, I got carried away there.

Then there's the next question: does saying, "I'm grateful for this thing" jinx the thing you're grateful for? It feels like when I practice gratitude for something, it's just tempting fate. That's what it feels like.

But in any event, the jerky teachers tell the students to be grateful, and it doesn't sit right with the narrator of the song.

Weird too grateful

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

Weird grateful

Here's a crappy mix of last week's song if you turn it around backwards.

The lyrics are:

The teacher said you can’t be grateful enough, grateful enough

Maybe I’m too grateful…cuz my mind is gone

Maybe I’m too grateful…and it don’t feel wrong

Maybe I’m too grateful

Maybe I’m too grateful…Maybe I’m too gratefu-u-u-ul

The teachers told them to be grateful every single day

For the lessons they are learning during their incessant stay

The angels’ minds are stinging singing tryin’ to get through to her

And they’re stressed it’s such a mess because her mind is such a blur

Maybe I’m too grateful…for this stupid class

Maybe I’m too grateful…the teacher is an ass

Maybe I’m too grateful

Her mind got really creepy sleepy, it was not her own

Troubles in the bad knees and we think she’s all alone

School is fucking mucking up her mind down to the bone

Waking up real scared because she knows she lost her home

We think she is trying to remember her name

But we think she has forgotten cuz she don’t feel the same

Trying to remember who she was yesterday

Sitting in that classroom made her memories go away

Maybe I’m too grateful…Maybe I’m too gratefu-u-u-ul

The teachers told them to be grateful every single day

For the lessons they are learning during their incessant stay

The angels’ minds are stinging singing tryin’ to get through to her

And they’re stressed it’s such a mess because her mind is such a blur

One day, I started writing a song about a fucked up school. Then, a few days later, that lawsuit came out, involving those pervy professors in the Dartmouth Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I was all, oh, my stars!!! That's where I got my Ph.D.! Then I finished writing the song about a week later. I thought it was just a song about how the school system fucks up kids, but after I finished writing and recording it, I realized parts of it were about my experiences in that poopy psych department (the unconscious mind works in mysterious ways). In any event, I decided to write an album about a fucked up school in order to process my experiences of having been in that department and how the culture there impacted me. This album ain't necessarily about Dartmouth, per se. It's more of a weird, inner exploration where I'm, like, having a fucked up dialogue with my unconscious about my experiences at Dartmouth. Jung used to call that kind of stuff "active imagination."