Sending You Words Of Wither

Sending You Words Of Wither, from Janet Jalopy, Queen of the Rats.

Tension surmounting, more and more, just keep dumping it on me, I don’t care anymore. It shakes my heart from red to blue, but it doesn’t matter. Lay it on me again and again, I’m Queen of the Rats and I’ve finally accepted my throne. I’m done playing nice, I’m done being courteous, let it all waste away to garbage that I and the other vermin can eat. I play the electric guitar so I can go deaf. That’s my real aim. I would have just poured coke and mint mentos down my ears, but that sounds like a thorn of a story to explain to others. So instead I strum and strum and strum, so everything can just shut up for a second and I don’t have to think. Think, think, think, let it all wither away. Songs embody emotions, human feeling, that much is obvious, but less so is the realization of how complex those sentiments can be. Think of all the different genres and different instruments and different everythings, it all serves for a transcendent experience unlike any other. That’s a good song. I don’t make good songs. I’m no enigma. My emotions are pure and simple and terrible. Annoyance, frustration, fed-up, they’re all synonyms of the bible’s wrath. Yeah, I am wrath. Yeah, that’s more to the point. You’d think that’d translate to screeching wails of black metal, fingers ramming the strings until either your ears or your fingers bleed, whichever first so. 

No, not so.

My rage is more defined.

Sophisticated. 

Subtle even.

Many have listened to it and not even realized the poison in the wandering tune. Some call it pop, others classical, few an entirely new genre in it’s itself. They’re wrong. It’s just anger, pure like good heroin. Not that I take drugs or anything, screw that, it just sounded right in my head to call it like that. I’m no writer. My words aren’t metaphorical or anything, I just mean what I say. That’s my motto. Don’t lie or tell mistruths, there’s no point to that. Yeah, ideals. On paper it looks cool, but it made writing academic papers a hell of a headache. It’s not fun, having to explain to your history professor why you used the word ‘freak’ 38 times in your analysis of Nietzsche philosophy. I don’t curse, you know. I never curse. Not fun, censoring yourself, don’t ask me why. I know there’s no one in my head, but sometimes it feels like there is, and I don’t know if that person is fifty or twenty six or eight, for god’s sake. And I couldn’t live with myself if some poor eight year-old had to suffer my explicits. So yeah, I censor myself.

What the freak of it?

I went to college.

Most people wouldn’t expect so, from the looks of me. Not that I dress a certain way, like a road biker or grunge punk, there’s just something in my eyes that screams, ‘loose cannon’. They’re not wrong. I am explosive, therefore cannon, and I can’t, or rather won’t care to, control it. Loose. But I am educated, actually graduated from my class Valedictorian. What can I say, that’s stuff interesting. And I needed it, in a screwed up sort of way. So I studied and I passed, studied and passed, it’s not that hard if you can manage both not caring and caring. Grades are meaningless, knowledge is not. Got it? You might need that sort of advice later on in life. What are you, like eight? Yeah, you’ll freaking need it.

Hell’s not a bad word. I’m realizing I used it earlier, and now I have to justify myself to you kids. But seriously, not naughty. Heaven isn’t a no-no, so why would hell be? Same thing with damnation, because you say absolution all the time if you’re high and academic. Favoring one over the other is hypocritical, you can’t cover up a half just because you don’t like it. That’s not how this works, whether you like it or not hell is as real as heaven is, not saying it doesn’t make that any less true. Thinking it does is a fault of your own hubris, your pride. Not to say that I’m judging you or anything, honestly I’m guilty of pretty much the same things. When I get really peeved off, I like to think happy moments don’t exist, that everyone’s just as miserable as I am. If I really think about it, or rather play my guitar loud enough I can’t think about it, I can pretend it’s true. 

Stop smiling.

Stop laughing.

It’s true. You’re all just as frustrated as me, I’m just the one saying it out loud. We’re all angry at something, whether it be ourselves or those around us or those above us or those under us, if you’re religious. Yeah, it goes both ways, it’s equal, so you can scream hell as loud as heaven and it’ll be alright.

Now that I think about it that’s my role in all of this, I’m the yeller damned. I’m the one hollering about hell so you don’t have to. Don’t worry, I’m screaming for you. Don’t hold onto it any longer. Let me do the thinking so you can be lazy and not.

Lucky.

You’re lucky.

You can maintain the lie and hold up the mask, I can’t. I’m not strong like that, I gotta tell the truth and let it explode out of my chest because I can’t subject myself to such torture. Holding it in. Please, that’s a slow death. I‘d rather go out like this, screaming and shaking my fists and wiggling my toes, with a bang, and a few more after that.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Guns are bad.

Guns are so very bad. Let it be known that I, Janet Jalopy, Queen of the Rats, condemn all weapons. 

Your words are weapons, so I condemn them too.

Condemn words, hail hail rock ‘n’ roll. I’m going to play my guitar really loud now.

Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Hear it. Hear the poison in these sound waves, I’m making them to destroy you. To end you all. I’m so angry, and I like it. I want you all to see that. So I can be the one laughing, laughing right in your face. Laughing in all of your faces. You don’t get to have all the fun, you don’t get to nod your head and tap your shoes at the notes I’m playing and say, “yes, your music speaks to me”. Screw that. I’m not speaking to you. I’m screaming. I want you to feel bad, I want you to feel oh so bad, to feel hurt and pain and nasties you’ve only dreamed of. Agony. And I want you to be acutely aware that I’m the one strangling you, strangling you for being so hard on yourself. Shut up, stop crying on the inside. Don’t you know I can hear it, don’t you know my ears are that sensitive? You’ve locked up all feelings inside your chest, but they haven’t disappeared. They never disappear. They can’t disappear. They’re scratching on your bones, begging to be let out. 

I have to listen to that bull.

I can hear it all the time, from every one of you, scratching and cutting and sobbing from the inside. That’s why I want to be deaf. I’m tired of hearing it. And you’re never going to let it out. You don’t have it in you. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. But hey, now I’m the voice. I’m the one inside your chest. Funny how that works out, you know? But seriously, shut up. It’s so much, it’s too much, and I've had this earache for four months now. It’s getting to me, it’s going through the canal and the stirrup and the hammer and entering my brain. This headache lasted for twelve minutes already and already am I sick of it. Stop pitying yourself, I’m done attending the party. You think too much, I think too much, we all think way too about ourselves. It’s called being self-centered, always focused on stupid bull like happiness and love and good vibes. You don’t need to think about that, it just is. 

So I’m just going to keep on raping my guitar, poor thing. 

Rape is not a bad word either. Well, actually, I guess it is, but it’s time you heard it anyways. Sorry kid, rape is something very very wrong and I don’t condone it. Let it be known that I, Janet Jalopy, Queen of the Rats, condemn all rape. 

Rape is sick, you people are sick, though not you kid, you’re not sick, not yet at least. I hope you never get sick, I hope you never contract this disease we call maturity. Being mature means holding things on the inside, and screw that. You don’t have to be mature to be a good person. Just take a look at me, Valedictorian of my class and Queen of the Rats. Look at that, look at those titles, quite impressive I know. I put them on my gig resumes, which is cool and actually works out because people think musicians are crazy like that. That they’re just high on drugs or sex or fames, or all three. Lies, those are lies. 

I’m high alright, but it’s on life and not anything else.

Anything else is dilution, addiction and all.

Nothing wrong with drugs or sex or fame, just don’t let it get to your head and mess with your life that bad.

But hey, who am I to make judgements anyways, I know plenty of happy potheads who go work in the morning and sleep at night. Unlike me, I’m really screwed upside down and around so things happen to go backwards. I go to work at night and sleep through mornings. People think I’m some sort of crazy rocker with party stamina. Not so. I’m just used to staying up at night anyways, whether I’m at a gig or in a bed. But then again, I don’t really sleep during the day. The world can be like that, not accommodating to your unique quirks. Oh yeah, they’re cool and all, just not convenient. It’s way easier to be an average Joe and/or Jane Doe, but it’s a hell of a lot more frustrating. That’s why I got an extra ‘t’, see, I’m Janet not Jane. I fit almost right in, except for the fact that I don’t at all. Life’s funny like that. In the end none of us belong, though we think we do. In reality nobody belongs to anybody. Fraternity houses, bands, school clubs, best friends, lovers, we’ll think of any title this side of the solar system to fit us right in. But we don’t, you don’t, I don’t. There is no average Joe and/or Jane Doe, it’s a false deity. 

But you really want to belong.

But you don’t.

So you kind of do, follow my logic? Just don’t think about it too hard, because it’s fallacious and will fall apart in a matter of seconds if you look into it. Actually just scratch all of that, ignore what I’ve said.

Yeah, yeah, you belong.

Oh you so belong.

That’s right, you’re right where you need to be.

See that right there, that’s acting, that’s pretending, that’s wearing a mask. Not too hard to do for most people, I’m the outlier in that I see that you’re all outliers. But keep on lying on, keep on hurting yourself, keep on subjecting me to screeching your heart wails.

I’m being sarcastic.

Because pretending doesn’t make you any happier than me, just as not saying hell doesn’t change a thing. In the end we’re all damned, in the end we’ve all sinned and are sinners and will sin. Because there’s wrath in all of you. And you know it. Maybe it happens a lot, maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know, but there’s been times when you’ve felt oh so angry. Don’t pent it up. Own it. Own the wrath, become the wrath, and join my kingdom of Rats, of which I am your Queen. We’ll feast on our garbage together. This is your transformation, your chance to become so much more than anything before you or after. Stop following the line because you’re off-beat and you will never be on-beat, accept that and knock it off, being mature. Yeah, this is your transformation, I’m growing you the freak down. Don’ t be a man, don’t be a woman, be a kid, because for kids stuff like gender doesn’t matter. A kid is a kid, and they belong like that. 

That’s right, come here kid, so you belong. 

That’s right, I was just kidding around earlier when I said you didn’t. 

That’s right, You belong.

Am I being sarcastic?