Your True Colors

Cyndi Lauper has always been one of my favorite musical artists.  She co-wrote and performed some beautiful music, including Time After Time, which includes a lot of metaphorical lyrics that I find interesting.

One of the things I like best about her, along with her music, is that she always made a point of letting her Freak Flag fly; in fact, the name of her 1983 debut album was She's So Unusual.  She definitely lived up to that description in her dress, hair styles, the way she danced, just everything about her.   I used to think it was probably mostly a gimmick designed to set her apart from the hundreds other would-be pop stars of the 1980s. I don't believe that any more.

The reason for my change in attitude about Cyndi's odd-ball persona, is because I have really listened to and thought about another of her songs, True Colors.  In this song, Cyndi is talking to someone she loves who is feeling sad.  She attributes her friend's feelings to a "world full of people" that make him lose sight of himself, causing the darkness inside of him to grow and make him feel small.   The chorus of the song is the advice she offers him:

"But I see your true colors

Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow"

She tells him that she can see the real him underneath the darkness, and his "true colors" are the reason she loves him.  Think about that.  She knows who he really is  -- not the person he might think he should be, or the person the world expects him to be, but the real him.  And she tells him not to be afraid to be who he really is, that that person is beautiful.  In the video linked above, she is living out the advice she gives in the ultra-strange ways she dresses,  the way she moves, and the way she wears her hair.  Parts of the video include settings that look like they might be out of a Dr Seuss picture-book.   It's as if she's saying to everyone, "Look at me.  I'm unusual, but I'm OK with it.  If I can look and act the way I do, what's to stop you from being who you really are?"

There are a lot of reasons that this advice might be hard for people to follow.  The "world full of people" that Cyndi's song refers puts all kinds of expectations on each of us.  As children, we are taught how we "should" be according to our gender, our socio-economic status, our race, ethnic background,  and a thousand other things.  Parents, schools, and churches impress on us their desires and expectations for who we should be and how we should act.  Advertisers make sure we are fully aware of the ways we fall short in appearance and physique.  It is easy to be inclined to try to hide, or even to deny our "true colors,"  the people we really are.  Letting those true colors show can be frightening and make us feel vulnerable.

Recently I have been reading Being Jesus in Nashville, the controversial new book by author Jim Palmer, who also wrote Divine Nobodies and Wide Open Spaces.  In his new book, Jim continues his journey of shedding religion to find Jesus,  He challenges himself to live a year exploring what it means "be Jesus" in his hometown of Nashville.  In other words, Jim seeks to interact with the people he encounters the way Jesus would have.  Pretty radical stuff.

One of the chapters of this book is titled "Being Jesus Means...Seeing People As They Truly Are."  In this chapter, he tells of his developing friendship with a homeless woman named Pattie he meets outside Panera Bread.  Their friendship grows, and eventually Pattie tells him, "Jim, I don't know if you will understand this, but when we are together I don't feel like a 'homeless person.'  I just feel like Pattie -- and that makes all the difference."

Jim relates his experience with Pattie to Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.  Jesus interacts with the woman just as the individual she is, not as a Samaritan, or a woman, or a sinner. He sees all those things about her, her true colors, but he doesn't hold back from their encounter.  He offers her "living water."  He sees her as she is, and he loves her anyway.  I believe that, as Cyndi Lauper says to her friend in her song, Jesus loves the woman at the well because she is the the exact individual that she is.  He didn't ask her to clean up her act first; he didn't weigh her down with heavy obligations.  He told her that  "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

"In truth."  I believe that means we must seek the truth about God, but it also means we must seek and embrace the truth about ourselves.  He already knows who we are, and he us loves anyway.  He loves us because of who we are.  If we can be real with God, if Jesus really knows us, then why should we be afraid to be who we are?  Why shouldn't we let our true colors come shining through?

"One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is."  —Norman Vincent Peale

Patsy, Trisha, and the Power of Music

Early one morning as I was driving downtown, I was listening to a classic country radio station.  I heard an old song that I remember from my childhood, Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You.”  According to Wikipedia, Patsy recorded it in 1961, the year I turned 5.  I have a very vivid memory of being at our little house on 38^th Place in Lawton, playing with my sister in our parents’ bedroom, for some reason.  The radio was on, and Patsy came on  singing the saddest song I had ever heard.  Even then I knew that she sang like an angel.   I listened attentively to the story she told, a story of lost love and regret, and I remember that it evoked images that I could relate to, such as a class ring and records, like my mother had, and other things I was too young to understand.  

At the time, my Dad was stationed in Korea, so I understood something about the feelings of loss the song expresses.  Every time I hear “She’s Got You,” I go back to that little house and remember vividly what it was like to be a 5-year-old boy and all the feelings I felt the first time I heard it.   ­­­­­­

I have a playlist on my iPod titled "Patsy and Trisha."  The Trisha is Trisha Yearwood, in case you aren’t familiar with her.  These two are connected in my mind for several reasons.   They are both altos, and both have the ability to sing a song in a way that really moves me.  Trisha has a song called “Xs and Os” that includes the line, “Well she's got her God, and she's got good wine, Aretha Franklin, and Patsy Cline.”  So, Trisha and I share a love for Patsy’s songs.

Also, I once met Trisha Yearwood.  Well, kind of.  Back about 1998, I took my daughter and a friend of hers to the Independence Day concert at Ft. Sill, which was outdoors on the Polo Field.  The concert  was all country that year, and there was some young cowboy the girls wanted to see, I don’t even remember who.  The headliner was Willie Nelson, but there were several other artists, and there was Trisha, who was the reason I wanted to see that concert.   I remember that when she took the stage, I pushed my way closer to the front so I could see her better.  She was singing something angelic and I was mesmerized.   As I stood there smiling, a little taller than most in the crowd, wearing my OU Sooners ball cap, Trisha looked directly at me.  I mean, we made eye contact.   She recognized me as an individual in the crowd.  There was a momentary connection between us.  For a few seconds, she was singing to me. It was not my imagination, really.  It happened. 

So, now when I hear Trisha, I remember that concert, the sounds of that day, the heat, and how cool it was to “meet” Trisha.  As when I hear Patsy Cline, Trisha’s singing takes me back to a specific place and time in my life.  

It is my experience that some songs have that power-- the ability to transport us, to remind of the way we once felt, and how it was to be that younger version of ourselves.  I bet you have your own examples, just as I do.

Along with Patsy's and Trisha's songs, there are many others that transport me back.  When I hear Gladys Knight sing "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me," I think back to when Dana and I were first dating.  It was the first of many songs that we now consider to be Our Songs.  And when I hear Edwin Starr's War, I am once again a junior-high kid, having a great time roller-skating as fast as I can at the Doe Doe Park rink.  

I think Trisha could relate to all these musings because she has another song called “The Song Remembers When.”  It is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.  If you have never heard that song, or even if you have, take just a few minutes and experience it here.    This song is another one about lost love, about a song on the radio bringing back memories and feelings long buried:

"After taking every detour
Getting lost and losing track
So that even if I wanted
I could not find my way back
After driving out the memory
Of the way things might have been

After I'd forgotten all about us
The song remembers when."

Those lyrics express beautifully one of my favorite aspects of music.  If you listen to Oldies Radio, like I do, assuming that you are old enough to remember when those old songs were new, you know what I am talking about.  Who needs a time machine?  The songs remember when.

  

(**)It Happens.....

 This afternoon, I started down the street for a walk, going east on our street on my regular route.  I thought I'd take advantage of the beautiful weather and maybe work off a little of that big lunch I had eaten earlier.  It was 75 degrees here today and cloudy, so it was perfect for such an excursion.   I was walking along past a house I've passed a thousand times when I noticed something I hadn't seen before.

There was a sign on the house's fence.  It said, "IF YOUR DOG POOPS PLEASE SCOOP."

Well, I laughed out loud.  For one thing, it was so totally unexpected.  When I first spotted the sign, I couldn't tell what it said, so I figured it was probably "BEWARE OF DOG"  or something like that.  But, no, this message was completely different.  I appreciated the little hint of humor, sort of a limerick with a message, since it kind of rhymes.  Also, ever the grammarian, I was glad to see there weren't any superfluous apostrophes, as in "IF YOUR DOG POOP'S PLEASE SCOOP."  That would have ruined it for me.  (Personally, I would have added a comma after "POOPS"  but I recognize that a comma is optional in this case and may have incurred an extra expense with the sign-maker. )

But more than that, the message on the sign immediately struck me as a metaphor for lots of interactions between people.   We often use "poop," or something more graphic (think Bovine Scatology), to represent negative stuff in our lives.   If you remember in the movie Forrest Gump, when Forrest was on his long run, some reporter asked him what he thought about something negative that had happened to him.  Forrest replied in his own distinctive intonation, "It happens."

It happens.  Poop happens. Sometimes there is dog poop in your yard.  Sometimes for real, and sometimes only metaphorically.

Sometimes the dog poop (either real or metaphorical) in your yard is just there, and there is no one you can blame for it.  As Forrest said, it just happens.  This might be because a band of wild dingoes (either real or metaphorical) invaded your neighborhood and chose your yard as a substitute for a Porta-Potty.  Or maybe there was a bad storm and a tree fell on your house.  Who you gonna blame, the tree?

Other times, there is someone to blame. Those you can blame come in two types.  (I have thought a lot about this, so you can trust me on it.)

One of the reasons that sign on the fence made me laugh is because it reminded me of (literal) dog-poop issues I experience at our previous house, which had a large corner lot with lots of space for neighborhood dogs to leave little presents for me to clean up.  Lots of little presents.  Some not so little.  So when I saw that sign, I immediately commiserated with the owner of that house.  I also wished that I had handled those issues more like he did, with a gentle reminder and a little humor.  More often I just fumed and raged.

As I said, our previous home had a large lot.  There was a long stretch of it that ran perpendicular to the front of the house and included one side of the privacy fence that surrounded our backyard.  From part of this stretch you could not even see the front of the house, and I could not see people allowing their dogs to fertilize it for me.   I knew they did, though, because I spent lots of time cleaning that stuff up.

One day, as I was driving home, I caught one of them in the act.  A lady I did not know, but whom I had seen around the neighborhood walking her little Yorkie (or some such critter), was standing and watching her doggie do his business on that stretch of my yard.   I slowed down, rolled down my car window, and as calmly as I could, said, "That is my yard.  You are using my yard as a dog-run.  I'm going to have to clean that up."

Well, this lady was immediately mortified.  She looked at my house, where I had pointed, and I could see that she had never even thought that this piece of ground that her dog was defiling belonged to somebody.  She sputtered sincere apologies.  She promised that she would send her husband down to "clean up this mess," and that it would never happen again.

I was really glad that I had not been rude to that lady.   She was a nice lady.  She was one of the first type of people who bring poop into your yard, or into your life.  These people do not mean to harm, they don't realize they are hurting anybody.   They are in their own little world and they just don't think about how what their actions affect you.  If I had had a "POOP, PLEASE SCOOP" sign like my current neighbor down the street, this lady would have  adhered to it.  As a matter of fact, her husband did come and clean up after the Yorkie (I guess he was in charge of such things in their household), and she went so far as to leave a note in our mailbox apologizing in writing.   I always waved to her when I saw her after that.

Another battle in the Poop Wars I fought at that house involved a representative of the other type of people who bring crap into your life.   There was another dog-walking woman in our neighborhood, whom I had observed more than once allowing her monster-dog to drop big steaming piles in other people's yards. In their front yards.  This woman could not claim ignorance like the lady with the Yorkie. Oh, no.  She was brazen.  She marched her dog around the neighborhood, letting crap drop where it would and never stooping to scoop.  She, like others of her type, know what they are doing to you and they just don't care.

I am a little ashamed (and a little proud) to describe what I did the day I found one of her brute's mounds in my front yard by the mailbox.  I got in my car and drove around the neighborhood until I found her and her beast, and I confronted her.  I told her I knew what she and her dog had done, and that the next time it happened I would shovel that stuff up and deposit it on her front porch.  She tried to deny the dirty deed, but I told her that I had examined just such a pile I had seen her dog deposit in my next-door neighbor's yard, and I knew that brand of doggie-doo when I saw it.  She never admitted anything, or apologized, but I didn't receive any more of those packages from Brutus.  (She also didn't know that I had no clue where she lived.)

So, anyway, that sign I saw this afternoon on my neighbor's fence reminded me of the Poop Wars, and it reminded me that sometimes people mess you over without meaning to.  I think it is best to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever you can.  Sometimes that idiot that pulls out in front of you in traffic just didn't see you, or is preoccupied with something.   I believe that most people are like the lady with the Yorkie, rather than that other woman.  And although I accomplished what I set out to when I confronted the crap-on-your-neighbor woman, I paid an emotional price by getting a bit overwrought.  It is better, whenever possible, to just remember that "it happens" and try to keep smiling.