02-04-19
I remember when I first heard this song, I was probably 5 or 6 years old, and my older brother had borrowed Dolittle from a friend…most of it was obnoxious noise, but hearing Sage Francis yell “HEY,” it got my attention and something that stayed with me until I was old enough to find them again on my own.
Flash-forward 15 years and despite my amassing music library I had never really listened to this album from start to finish. I was going through a very dark place having learned that my long-time girlfriend had just recently experienced a miscarriage. We had broken up a few months before, but she assured me that it was mine.
It was a floor falling out beneath me moment.
I tried to do everything I could to tend to her, but it had long since passed, she just felt I should finally know. She didn’t want to talk about anymore, having said that she had already processed it. So again, I did what I could. I tried not to talk about it beyond what she would say, and I decided to be more accommodating just generally as a human, but I was devastated and didn’t know in the slightest how to process everything. I couldn’t talk to the person who was my best friend, she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t feel like I could talk about it with any of my other friends, I suppose I thought they would look at either one of us differently, and I was more or less asked to keep it private.
I tried to go to support groups, and they were somewhat helpful, but every other man was in a vastly different situation, typically being in a marriage and significantly older. Their views were useful, and it broadened my understanding of how the entire process associated with miscarriages bring a certain stigmatized sense of shame. There’s no logic to it, and anyone evaluating it for more than a few minutes is quick to come to this realization. It didn’t matter the age of the men in the group, we all were experiencing this similar response of remorse, and none of us felt fully equipped to process it with the tools we had.
It took considerable time to find a resolution, and to understand how and why my reactions and emotional responses were as such. I know that my most robust response of remorse lied in the fact that at the time I never felt like I could be present for this person I felt so emotionally tied to, despite all my efforts. I learned they were never enough because quite frankly there is no level of support of energy that can be “enough” in those situations. To think otherwise is folly and setting yourself up to defeat.
This song interestingly enough has long since lost this direct connection for me. I suppose when I was able to start untangling how everything transpired, I was able to untangle its emotional grip on my memory. I’m not accustomed to isolating a song to a single memory, person, event, etc., so I am often able to redefine what music means to me.
Lyrics:
Hey
Been trying to meet you
Hey
Must be a devil between us
Or whores in my head
Whores at the door
Whore in my bed
But hey
Where have you been?
If you go, I will surely die
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
‘Uh’ said the man to the lady
‘Uh’ said the lady to the man she adored
And the whores like a choir
Go ‘uh’ all night
And Mary ain’t you tired of this?
Uh
Is
The
Sound
That the mother makes when the baby breaks
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained
We’re chained