Skip to main content

Song of the Week: "Testing 1, 2, 3"

In keeping loosely with my previous blog, my song of the week is "Testing 1, 2, 3" from the BNL album Everything to Everyone.

To be fair, though, I've really had the whole album in mind. Thelma and I have seven BNL albums in our collection. This is our sixth. It's a soft-sell criticism of celebrity culture, corporate excess and government policy, but somehow it still manages to play like a pop album instead of a lecture.

"Testing 1, 2, 3" captures the internal thoughts of someone who wants to move beyond the identity everyone else seems content to affix to them. It rings true to me when I think about people who have an overly simple and static idea of who I am or what I stand for.

Testing 1,2,3
Can anybody hear me?
If I shed the irony
Would anybody cheer me?
If I acted less like me
Would I be in the clear?

I remember when Thelma and I were wrapping up our time in Provo. It was the summer of 1997. Braeden was just a few months old. I had been accepted to Yale but I wasn't eager to let anyone know about it. I wasn't comfortable with how people reacted. For some people Yale connotes elitism or aloofness. I didn't like having that image projected on me. Even now, if someone asks me about graduate school, I just say I went to school in Connecticut. Most people drop it there. If they ask where, I say New Haven. That's usually enough to smoke out the people who were just asking to be polite. If they press it further, I'll tell them Yale.

Maybe my image could stand for something of a makeover, though. That same summer Thelma told one of our neighbors that we were moving because I had been accepted at Yale. The neighbor looked shocked and volunteered that they "didn't even know [I] was smart."

I suppose we are all richer and more real than we appear. For every moment I've mourned not being understood in my complexity, I'm sure there are countless occasions where I've lazily passed over someone else.

Well, I said it was the album on my mind as much as the song. So, I've included a few other songs in the play list. The best of them, "For You", is a bittersweet love song illustrating the other side of being misunderstood—the inability or unwillingness to share our true feelings.

I will give you all I could ever give
Though it's less than you will need
Could you just forget, if you can't forgive
All the things I cannot concede
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sons and Daughters unto God

Lately, I find myself reciting in my mind portions of The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles . I memorized it years ago when our family was studying it at Easter. It has been a constant source of strength and perspective in my life. For all the scripture and sermon that exists about Jesus Christ, I’m not sure there is a more succinct and beautiful treatment of who he is and why it matters. There is one passage that repeats D&C 76. Referring to Jesus Christ, the Prophet Joseph wrote, “We saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father— That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” ( D&C 76: 23-24 ) I find in these truths evidence of Jesus Christ’s sweeping love and grace. Because of the universal atonement of Jesus Christ, he brings every inhabitant of every world he has ever created back into t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Three Wonders

I know the tradition began earlier, but I associate it with the Carmen Red Oldsmobile station wagon. There was also the Toyota van, but the Oldsmobile days were the magic ones. Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we would literally go. (Also through the valley, past the waterfalls, over the hill, and along the lake.) Neilan family Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The house where my mom was raised, where aunts, uncles, and cousins were just a few houses or blocks away. The two story house where on any ordinary day you entered directly into the kitchen, sat at the kitchen table, and just listened to my mom and her parents talk as an assortment of her brothers would inevitably call or stop by. But on Christmas Eve, the house was already packed to the brim with family, presents, food, and laughter. So much laughter. It was a wonderland as a child to be surrounded by people who loved you and were excited to see you. The house was warm and the large w...
2 comments
Read more

Driving East

I will wake up tomorrow morning, on Father’s Day, alone in Cheyenne without my family. I say this matter-of-factly. Designated days have only a light hold on me. An unexpected business trip that means being gone on Father’s Day? No problem. I'm not much for ceremony. More than once we have marked Father’s Day by splurging for a hotdog at Costco while filling up the minivan on a road trip. (Surely, Cheyenne has a Costco.) If I wake up emotional tomorrow morning, it's not because I'm alone on Father’s Day. It will be because of the cocktail of emotions I drank today. —— Driving across Wyoming was beautiful. Everything below the horizon looked groomed and green. The grass, the hills. the forests. A sea of green dusted with flecks of distant snowfields and antelope. (So many antelope.) Above the horizon, wild white and stormy black scratched across brilliant blue. The kind of sea and sky that softens your heart and tricks your mind.  I pulled off the highway at Little America f...
2 comments
Read more