“Confessions To The Pew”

Another song I wrote while rapid cycling, I was definitely inspired by a particular book that I reference in the first couple of lines in the song. What I was trying to say, was that tragedy and the reaction to it, can create liars out of us. I don’t and didn’t mean that in a rude way, but in an objective way. We lie in order to survive. In my case, this was the year following my first known manic episode, the year following the realization that I was deemed “deviant” due to being bi and understanding that people did not view trans people kindly…I had no words for how I was different gender wise because I felt very at home in femme presentation for the most part, but I did not “feel” whatever the girls and women around me were feeling. Later as I revisited this song, I realized that in the years in which this song was initially written and explored, I was living in what many would call, a tragedy, and perpetually lied to myself and others in order to preserve what sliver of sanity I had left until I couldn’t anymore. But similar to the book, it uncovered the mysteries and stories of my past, my elders past and my ancestral past in order to connect more deeply to those I find important and understand more about myself as a neurodiverse person. I, without getting too deeply into it, was often told by family members, one in particular who is no longer with us, that I was flagged by another family member as being autistic. Upon asking said family member why they thought I was autistic, they never denied it and their explanations made a lot of sense, especially considering that they had plenty of experience with kids at the point in which they felt that label applied to me. However, they were told that “no child in this family is Autistic.” I am not saying this to shame that person who said it, it, unfortunately, was coming from a place of fear and desire to protect me from things they themselves had faced in the medical field most likely. I am saying this to give an idea of why I felt deeply empathetic towards the main character in the book and why I felt so drawn to the book and later, movie.

I highly encourage reading the Book and watching the movie, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, though it has its critiques and I am not dismissing those critiques by the way. However I still think the work should be explored for the sake of studying how people write about major tragedies and the choice to orient the story from the perspective that it did.