Sorry, Mom
Apr. 27th, 2005 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaSo I owned this album on vinyl when I was in my early teens. (Actually, I think Dad may have bought it for me.) And this was always my favorite song on the album. Yeah, it wasn't terribly philosophical, but when you're thirteen, it's deep for radio airplay.
At one point my mother asked me whether I thought, just because the song used explicitly religious language, whether that meant the band were really "believers" or not. (Mom used to ask me questions like this whenever she didn't like the music I was listening to, but couldn't really criticize it because there wasn't anything blatantly objectionable.) I seem to recall giving a typically incoherent answer.
Well, here's my answer now: I think the message they're singing must have meant something to them, or they wouldn't have written and recorded the song. So, yes, I think they believe it for themselves; I think the Kyrie is meaningful for them. But no, I don't think that means that they have to mean the same thing by it that she does, and I think it's awfully selfish to think it has to. Why be so small-minded as to challenge someone else's expression of faith, even if it sounds like it challenges what you think it means to believe?
I'll take someone's bravery in singing in the face of doubt over my mother's rock-solid certainty any day.
At one point my mother asked me whether I thought, just because the song used explicitly religious language, whether that meant the band were really "believers" or not. (Mom used to ask me questions like this whenever she didn't like the music I was listening to, but couldn't really criticize it because there wasn't anything blatantly objectionable.) I seem to recall giving a typically incoherent answer.
Well, here's my answer now: I think the message they're singing must have meant something to them, or they wouldn't have written and recorded the song. So, yes, I think they believe it for themselves; I think the Kyrie is meaningful for them. But no, I don't think that means that they have to mean the same thing by it that she does, and I think it's awfully selfish to think it has to. Why be so small-minded as to challenge someone else's expression of faith, even if it sounds like it challenges what you think it means to believe?
I'll take someone's bravery in singing in the face of doubt over my mother's rock-solid certainty any day.
