I Don't Go to Therapy to Find out if I'm a Freak

Something I really appreciate are songs that are about something other than falling in love. Not that falling in love is bad. It's great. It's just that there are so many other things in this world to think about. So why not set some of those things to music?

One day, in a fit of teenage rebellion, I stumbled on one of those rare not-about-love songs when I went to Hastings and bought a Lilith Fair cd. I found it on the used rack for a massive discount and just holding it made my palms sweat. I kept thinking of all the subversive material it might possibly contain. After all, there were some songs by the Indigo Girls and they were, well, you know, lesbians. I kept thinking of the day my brother brought home an Alanis Morisette cd and the way my parents reacted.

But, for the moment, I was a being a rebellious teenager so I bought it and furtively listened to it late at night in my room. A lot of the songs were too arty or too angst-y for my delightfully sheltered Mormon brain. However, there were some songs that really resonated with my inner rhythms--an awesome arrangement of "Eternal Flame" was one of them. (I'm too young to know the '80s version of it, so that cd was my first exposure to that fabulous teenage love song.)

Another of my favorites was a song by Dar Williams called "What do You Hear in These Sounds". Perhaps my liking of the song was a premonition because when I heard Williams' throaty and vulnerable voice croon the first line, "I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak," I knew I had found a personal anthem.

So, since I think putting the actual song on here would be some sort of copyright infringement and I'm afraid of going to jail, I'm posting the lyrics for you all to enjoy. Well, and to be honest, I have no idea how to put a song on my blog. I just barely figured out how to put my picture on here. And my husband had to help with that. So, go to Itunes and look up Dar Williams "What do You Hear in these Sounds" so you know what it's supposed to sound like--it's on there I checked :)

WHAT DO YOU HEAR IN THESE SOUNDS?

I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
I go and I find the one and only answer every week
And it's just me and all the memories to follow
Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour
And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something,
But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself...

And she says ooh, aah, what do you hear in these sounds?
And, ooh, aah what do you hear in these sounds?

I say, "I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing
And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving."
And she says "Oh." I say "What?" She says "Exactly."
I say, "What, you think I'm angry
Does that mean you think I'm angry?"
She says, "Look, you come here every week
With jigsaw pieces of your past.
It's all on little sound bites and voices out of photographs.
And that's all yours, that's the guide, that's the map.
So tell me, where does the arrow point to?
Who invented roses?"

And, ooh, aah what do you hear in these sounds?
And, ooh, aah what do you hear in these sounds?

And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But, oh, how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself.
And when I wake up and ask myself what state I'm in
I say, "Well I'm lucky, cause I am like East Berlin."
I had this wall and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio.
And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing,
And they'd know that I was scared,
They'd know that I was guessing.
But the wall came down and there they stood before me
With their stumbling and their mumbling
And their calling out just like me.

And, ooh, aah, The stories that nobody hears
And, ooh, aah, and I collect these sounds in my ears
And, ooh, aah, that's what I hear in these sounds
And, ooh, aah, that's what I hear in these
That's what I hear in these sounds.