Censorship Of The Damned

(with love, for Capello)

I have to think of my brain like it's a giant bladder with a UTI. It hurts so much to hold everything in but if I let it all out it will be exactly as though I have pissed all over your living room floor. Imagine my embarrassment. Imagine your horror. I have been leaking too much lately. Is there an isle at the grocery store dedicated to incontinence of the brain?

I should not be writing on my blog right now. But I just wrote a whole post that I will not be posting here (NOT the one I removed the other morning, Capello, and let's just hope you were the only one to read that gem!) and I still have acres of words crowding my brain. I just can't seem to drain them fast enough lately.

I have an abscess of inappropriate words.

And no, I didn't do the drawing today. I got distracted by cooking some mushroom soup and breaking my camera while taking pictures of a glass ornament my dog chewed up and that I'm hoping hasn't punctured her intestines.

I've been listening to some music lately that I have needed to acquire for a long time now. I had a physical itch to hear three songs from the movie about Leonard Cohen ("I'm your man") that were sung by other musicians. I also needed a song from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack from season two. A song by Sara MacLachlan called "Full of Grace". I also have needed a version of "Girl From The North Country" sung as a duet by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. I'm listening to these songs right now. Music makes me very emotional. Mostly in a good way.

As I've been listening to these songs I have been wondering about censorship quite a lot. Music tells a lot of truths that no one else is telling and I wonder if, like art, children should be exposed to it's integrity? I'm wondering what other parents do? Philip plays The Clash a lot in the car with Max and there are some swear words there in some songs. And some strong imagery.

But nothing really compares to these estimable lines:

"...you were giving me head on the unmade bed, while the limousines wait in the street..."

and I couldn't help but wonder how I would explain that line to my child if he heard it and asked me about it. But then this line stops me every time:

"...and clenching your fists for the ones like us,
oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music..."

We are ugly but we have the music.

Somehow I don't want to keep that from my kid. We have taken the stance of no censorship for the most part because life is not a "Lifetime" soft focus film about family "VALUES" so much as it's a gritty, messy, base, and stinky experience with the great potential for laughter, beauty, love, and pleasure. Perhaps I am expected to teach my son the myth, but I'm inclined to let him see the whole thing in it's hideous glory so that he knows what greatness is possible as well as how low the human spirit can sink.

Life comes on in inches. He's only seven years old right now. How much do I let him hear at this point? The most stupid thing I can think of, as a parenting method, is to build up a whole lot of myth in order to protect your young offspring only to have to rip all the myths down when they get older. There will be enough of that without us setting our kids up for it on purpose.

One of my other favorite songs, however, sports the following lines which I love with an intense passion. "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues:

"You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God its our last"

I cannot describe accurately for you with what relish I belt out those lines on the top of my lungs when I'm alone cleaning the house.

Even though, EVEN THOUGH, I would NEVER use the word "faggot" to describe anyone. It's not a word I use. Except for when I'm belting out these lyrics unapologetically.

Music is art. Art is not for censorship. I believe this to the core of my being. Maybe it's my hippie roots. Maybe it's because my own truth comes at such a cost that to think it might be covered in chaste towels against delicate eyes makes me a little sick.

Today Max has discovered his first loose tooth. I cannot possibly make you understand how much of a simultaneous relief and huge anxiety this is. (But you know I'll try anyway) It's a relief because I was truly beginning to think he was going to be one of those rare people who never develop adult teeth. That's not a good look for anyone: baby teeth in adult head. He's been anxious too because so many of his friends have already started to get their adult teeth in.

It causes me a visceral anxiety though because I have deeply rooted teeth issues- that revolve around loose teeth. Teeth coming loose, falling out, hanging by a thread,

choke-choke-choke-

I hated losing my baby teeth to get my adult teeth and I have distinct memories of it. How a tooth feels when it's hanging by a thread of flesh. The metallic taste of empty raw gums. The blood in phases. The ghostly holes in the the pearlies. The tongue constantly worrying those empty spaces. One of the biggest arguments I had against having children, besides the concern that I come from a long line of crazy people and am crazy myself, was having to see another human being lose all its teeth one by one.

He's thought he had loose teeth before. I've checked again and again and had to disappoint him. Tonight he said his tooth hurt when he was brushing it. He said it felt like he bashed his toothbrush into it. I felt it. Damn it! The thing was really loose!! Not the kind of loose a toothbrush could have accomplished. I got the creepy shivers all through my bones. I almost ejected myself from the bed we were snuggling in to get as far away from that toothy situation as possible.

In the end I can never leave my child at moments like this. There was no need for him to know that my stomach was trying to make an elegant exit through my feet. Except that, of course, I had to tell him.

Hello, my name is Angelina and I have verbal incontinence...

Right now I don't want to go to bed. I'm listening to the songs I need to listen to. I suppose I will need to go back to "Word" and write some more crap off the radar where I can leak my crazy all over the place and not be ashamed of my word whoring when I wake up in the morning.

Tomorrow morning will be the last opportunity I will have to blast music by myself, alone. It's the last day before Max is off for vacation. At home. At home all the time. I need to leave the computer off. I need to put on some eye make up and lipstick. I need to mop my wood floors. I need to get all the music I can into my chest where it can live its truth.

The truth that David Bowie so often says more succinctly than I ever could:

"My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought Id need so many people"



Note: The teeth issues go deep. The whole time I listen to Rufus Wainwright's version of "The Chelsea Hotel" I think about his teeth. I love his teeth. I think of them with great admiration. I wish I had his teeth. I wonder how it might feel to wear his teeth. To be his teeth. Until Bowie got his capped, I loved his teeth too. I have, a million times, imagined how it would feel to have his teeth. I don't care that they were stained. The shape, the particular crookedness was so amazingly attractive and unique and somehow cemented his genius for me. People with insufferably white and straight teeth of uniform shape cannot be creative, smart, or cool.

I will judge you by your teeth long before I will judge you by your religion. My teeth are much too yellow for pleasure. If I didn't have such an intense gag reflex and if I wasn't emetaphobic, I would get them whitened. I like whitish teeth. I just don't like them to be all the same shape and size. I like interesting teeth. I'm really bummed out that Kathryn Heigl is getting her teeth fixed. Rufus is quite likely gay, and I'm married and not gay, but if I ever met him I would have to insist he be my best friend on the strength of his teeth. Capello also has great teeth.