I Am Stupid

I am stupid mix 15

This is the next song in the continuing series of songs about a fucked up school. This one's about how the teachers make the students feel stupid.  (See below if you're unfamiliar with this project).

I was looking at all the blog entries in this series the other day and realized, whoops, it started out with the main character being a grown up woman, and then a little ways in, she regressed and turned into a little girl.  I was all, "ooooops," when I noticed that.

I made her grown up again in this song - see, the picture above is her as a grown up woman (yeah, I suck at drawing women); and the dude is her friend, that boy in the baseball cap in previous entries, but all growed up.

Yeah, that was weird that I made the character regress in this here blog. But, as I've been sayin' all along, the unconscious mind - which is where I'm gettin' lots of this material from - exists in all time periods, not just one. That's why a lot of these songs have stuff in them from both my grad-school days, and my little kid days. Cuz that old unconscious mind of mine is accessing all different time periods. Dood.

Weird i am stupid mix 2

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

And here are the lyrics:

I’m as insignificant as a speck of dust on a mosquito’s butt

There she is again, we found her again

Her brain got twisted and got torqued

And now she thinks she is a dork

Who never does her work that well

And now she thinks she’s goin’ to Hell

We are the angels who are tryin’ to tell her that she’s fine

But she don’t hear us cuz the teachers got into her mind

She used to be able to communicate with us

But she lost that connection when she got on that bus

The only thing she knows now is stupidness and dread

And it makes her never want to get out of bed

We work hard, don’tcha know, but the teachers said we don’t

I am stupid

And we’re going to hell cuz we did not hear the bell

We were late to class and the teacher said…

We are stupid

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." 

Backwards Song About Stupidness

BCKSTUPD

This is the backwards version of next week's song, which'll be the next song in the continuing series of songs about a fucked up school.  The colors of the water in the picture are the colors I imagine the first part of the song as sounding like.  The colors of the sailboat and the sky are the colors I imagine the second part of the song as sounding like.

Why Did I Die Today?

DIETODAY
Here's the next song in the series of songs about a fucked up school. (If you're new to this blog or don't know what I'm talking about, scroll to the bottom of this post for further explanation).

Yeah, so this song ain't about a literal death, but a figurative one. Like, it's a song about a day that changes one's life for the worse - and as such, it can feel like a death. In the narrative, the main character's guardian angels lose track of her because her mind got all distorted by the fucked up school on that day of poopy badness. It got fucked up and distorted by the fucked up school and all the dumb, boring lessons that turned her mind into mush. When one's mind turns to mush, it's hard to communicate with angels, probably because it's hard for a mushy, corrupted mind to pick up angels' signals. And it's hard for angels to pick up signals coming from such a mind because a mushy distorted mind ain't good at sending out telepathic signals.

In listening to the song, I think - autobiographically speaking - it's about my first day of kindergarten. That was a really stupid day, a day in which everything changed. Everything all turned into stupidness (it doesn't help when you have a kindergarten teacher who is evil and hates kids).

It's also about 2 days I can pinpoint in my experiences in the Dartmouth Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I ain't gonna say exactly which days they were cuz I'm not ready to be all open about that. I think I still need time to process those poopy events. But - FYI - it's nuthin' like what happened to the people in the lawsuit, described below. Yeah, I'm still puzzling out what all contributed to those 2 days of metaphorical death. It can be tricky to partial out what all accounts for bad events in your life. It's easy to say, "I didn't play any role in this," but in reality, more often than not, one contributes at least in part, to poopy events in one's life.

Oh yeah, the picture is the girl, who's the main character, and her friend waiting for the School Bus of Death. The girl has a unicorn on her lunch box.

Weird why did i die today
Here's last week's song if you play it backwards.

Here are the lyrics - the ones in blue are from the angels' points of view, the ones in red are from the main-character-girl's point of view, and the ones in white are the disembodied narrator (or maybe that's me, come to think of it):

She’s having a nice day / so now we can relax

She’s having a nice day / but we will not turn our backs

She’s having a nice day / oh, wait, where did she go?

She’s having a nice day / Oh, fuck, we do not know

And the teachers told us / that the world is flat

And our minds got boring / the longer that we sat

Just this day, why did I die today?

And the teachers told us / lather, rinse, repeat

Learn this stupid lesson / and you will get a treat

Just this day, why did I die today?

Oh fuck what did the teachers do to her brain? / Took a wild animal and they made her tame

Listening to lessons in the middle of the day / She would have been better off if they’d let her play

When her mind got boring / she thought that she had died

A little bit of stupidness / is what she felt inside

The angels could not find her / because she lost her mind

To stupid, boring teachers / that made the angels blind

Just this day, why did I die today?

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." 

Backwards Song With "Fuck" In It

BACKWDIE

 Here's the backwards version of next week's song. The rapping part has the word, "fuck" in it several times.

Morning Comes to Town, Mourning Comes to Town

MOURNING
Here's the next song in the series of songs about a fucked up school (see the thingy at the bottom if you're new to this here blog or don't know what I'm talking about). This is a song with a play on words, where it could be about morning, or it could be about mourning. I mean, it's actually about both - they're all interchangeable. In this song, the fucked up school is fucking up kids in such a way that they grieve for the lives they could have had if they had not gone to that fucked up school. It also has to do, in general, with how kids lose their innocence when they end up in the school system.

It's about other stuff, too, stuff that's kickin' around in my brain about my own life. Listening to it, I realize it relates to the dumb public school system I went to, as well as some o' the poopy experiences that came outta bein' in the Dartmouth Psychological and Brain Sciences department. It's weird how my unconscious mind merged it all together; but, then again, Carl Jung says that the unconscious doesn't have the same sense of time that the conscious mind has. The unconscious is in all time periods at once (or, at least I think that's what he said).

The picture's my attempt to draw little kids, y'know, little kids sitting at their desks. The girl is sad and mourning for the life she coulda had, had she not gone to that fucked up school. The boy is staring into space, the way the song implies.

Weird morning comes to town
This is last week's song if you turn it around backwards.

Here are the lyrics:

And I’m here/ with pretentious teachers, scary mean bad creatures

And I’m here/ In the fucked up school where we all have a blank stare

Morning comes to town, Mourning comes to town

It was my last chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance

I forgot how to dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance

It’s the obligatory rap of the song

As a matter of fact the story is wrong

The school that was supposed to be hoity toity cool

Made the students dumb…turned them into tools

Wish that they could live their lives all over again

Now they’re spending time thinking ‘bout what could have been

Would their lives have been nifty and cool

If they had not gone to that stupid dumb school

And I’m here / smoking pot in the toilet with my friends who like it

Morning comes to town, Mourning comes to town

It was my last chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance chance

I forgot how to dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance

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." 

Backwards Song About Mourning or Morning

BACMOURN

Here's the backwards version of next week's song, which is part of the continuing series of songs about a fucked up school. The forwards version is about mourning. But it might also be about morning. There's a picture of a snake cuz the word "snake" shows up in the song repeatedly.

Mister Rogers Graduation Speech Song

MRROGERS
This is a song about Fred Rogers coming and speaking at my Dartmouth graduation. It's the next song in the continuing series of songs about a fucked up school. (See below if you're new to this here blog or have no idea what I'm talking about).

See, this song can go 2 different ways. It could be a song about kids being at a fucked up school, who got fucked up by that school, and Mister Rogers coming to make them feel better.

But it could also be a song about real life. See, as I said above, he was the commencement speaker at my graduation, and I've been thinking a lot about him and that speech he gave. As a result, I decided to write a song about the day he came and gave that speech. It was a fan-tabulous speech. I think everyone in the audience was blown away. It was the best-est graduation speech in the history of mankind.

A couple notes....

When the song sez, "Mister Rogers came that day to wipe the students' tears away," I'm talking, in part, about how he addressed 9-11 in that there speech. But as I said, above, it could also be him comforting students who got fucked up by their school.

About the picture: First of all, my apologies to Mister Rogers, up in Heaven, if that's not a good likeness of him. Secondly, you'll notice that the graduating students all look like middle aged men. That's because I'm not a very good draw-er, and as such, the only cartoon characters I can draw adequately are middle aged men. Young people and women - I'm not good at drawering them. Poopity poop. Thirdly, I was trying to make the graduating people look like they're being moved to tears by the speech - but they just ended up looking bummed out. Oh, and I accidentally drew the lectern thingy backwards.

Here's a weird fun-fact about the song. There's a line "...to save the goats inside the flock." I didn't watch the Mister Rogers documentary until after I wrote and recorded the song. There's a part where his wife said he was scared he wasn't gonna make it to Heaven or something - and he used goats as a metaphor for people who were not going to go to Heaven. Weird, man. Maybe I was all psychic or something when I wrote that line. In any event, if someone like Mister Rogers cain't make it up to Heaven, then all the rest of us are screwed.

Weird mister rogers song mix 2
This is last week's song if you turn it around backwards. Actually, I'm fibbing just a teeny tiny bit. Some of the vocals weren't synchronized with the rhythm in the turned-around version, so I had to mix down some of the vocal tracks separately and then fuck around with the timing of them, relative to the rhythm track, in order to make it work.

Here are the lyrics:

Good Old Fred he gave a talk / to save the goats inside the flock

It felt like turning back the clock / to little kid land when things rocked

-

Mister Rogers came that day / To wipe the students’ tears away

Did the angels send him there? / because they dropped the ball but they still care

Mister Rogers said that it’s a privilege to be right here

And that kindness is the best / it takes away the darkest fear

Mister Rogers came that day / To wipe the students’ tears away

Did the angels send him there? / because they dropped the ball but they still care

I cannot believe how good that talk was

It made you feel better and I think that is because

There’s a person in the world who is him

Beaming tons of light on the souls that got dim

I wish Mister Rogers could come right back

To make us feel better even when our days are black

But Jesus up in Heaven said they needed him there

To sing away the darkness in a world that does not care

It is a beau- beautiful day. Neighbors are nice. They come out and play.

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." 

Backwards Song With Mister Rogers In It

BACROGRS

This is the backwards version of the next song in the album about a fucked up school. It's got Mister Rogers in it, but that won't become apparent till next week. Then you'll find out what those angels' discourse is about, too. Yesiree.

Post-script: oh, fuck, I forgot to draw wings on those angels. Poop.

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.