It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but from time to time, you get the ol’ Jesus Freaks outside of a metal show, warning that the music you’re about to hear is the work of Satan. Faith is so commonly used as a cudgel in our modern culture, and much more so than something that lifts up humanity. In the most modern of times, where faith is used as thin justification to willfully, intentionally murder and starve babies, the Christian Nationalists hold up a king with an obvious pedophilic past, and Megachurches fleece their flocks on a scale with modern agriculture, yet turn that flock away when it comes to its door seeking shelter from a literal storm, it’s hard to take any of their grandstanding seriously. I suspect the next time someone attempts to pound the holy spirit into my chest, I’ll probably laugh out loud. I just can’t with these guys.
That isn’t to say that I doubt an individual’s sincerity of faith. I love the idea of faith and what it does for us. A spiritual practice can serve as a great starter set of ethics to live by. I will go so far to say that I love the Christian message and nearly all of his teachings (though not necessarily as interpreted by Paul). The problem is that everyone thinks their personal perspective is definitive and it follows that faith as a personal device often becomes grist for competitive, social status. I grew up outside of the church but I had plenty of people trying to assimilate me. I always walked away from it with the same impression. In all things, the ego has us homosapiens beating our chests atop whatever minor pile of shit we happen to find ourselves near.
As for my personal relationship with “Dear God” (the song, not the concept), when I was in high school, one of the extracurriculars I flourished in was forensics. There were a lot of different categories you could compete in. I was in it to act and had quite a bit of success in the dramatic categories. But you compete as a squad against other schools and the more categories you can compete in, the better the team does overall. Our coach pushed us to take secondary pieces and one of the available categories was Interpretation of Poetry. I certainly had poetry that I was enamored with, but taking the description literally and doing so with a thought to dramatic aspirations, I wanted poetry that could be visceral. I was so jealous of the African American students who could explore their experience and invest so much of themselves you could feel it. I needed a piece that could do the same, but be authentic to me. So I started looking for that, but found my taste in poetry was very dry in that regard (I mean one of my albums nods to a T.S. Eliot work). Lots of classics, but nothing I could bring the storm with. Then, it occured to me that I could look to music as a jumping off point.
When I first told my coach that I was looking at lyrics, she pushed back saying they wouldn’t have enough literary merit. But me being me, I had already clocked that boomers loved their hippie figureheads, so when I brought in “Dear God” to practice, I told her it was an obscure poem written by JIm Morrison and she was so easily placated that I rolled my eyes when it floated right past her.
In performances, I properly credited the piece to its author, Andy Partridge. The song caused a minor firestorm of controversy when it was released, but in those pre-internet days, in the deep midwest no one was even minorly aware of XTC or the song. Regardless, the judges of the rural high schools were decidedly not a fan of the subject (with lots of proselytizing in the judge’s notes to me). I did very poorly, however self-satisfied I was to bring brash, confrontational drama of the song’s climax. But to that end, you could accurately say that I have been performing this song longest of all the ones I’ve covered.
The style of the original was meant to pay homage musically to The Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon.” I think it is safe to say that my version is not trying to do that — though I confess that I find the subversive nature of that original juxtaposition to be glorious.