Papa Justify
“Dirty” has been an evolution from one meaning to the next, until it finally has become a statement of freedom for me… It may have started as an angry outburst, but it now conveys a since of freedom from emotional and worldly torture. The hook “Torture me a thing or two” is my way of taking on life’s troubles. Looking them straight in the face and saying “Bring it on”. I believe with all my heart that the truth will always reveal itself and ultimately set you free. That’s the “Dirty Truth” to those who may not want it to be revealed. My favorite verse is “I see that sorrow devil laying at your feet, all on account the way you treated me” that’s the look of defeat the devil will ultimately have when the truth, and in my belief God’s Will, will come to pass.
Dirty
Maybe one of the most personal songs I’ve written is “Unseen”. This tells the story of the constant mental battle I fought for most of my life. And even to this day it changes perspective depending on my memories. Let me clue you in before I get you lost! I was sexually abused from the ages of three to about seven by two older cousins. I lived alone with this secrete until my late teens, but even then only revealed the truth to a select few friends, never to my family. It wasn’t until I was 27 that I finally had enough torment in my head and needed to let go and move on that I told my family and ultimately confronted my abusers in 2006.
During all the silence is when this song takes place. Basically it’s a conversation in my head. The perspective changes as my thoughts were ever changing and racing at the time I wrote it. Sometimes it’s a conversation with God, or my parents, or myself. None the less the topic is directly acknowledging that something went wrong and it’s evident in my life that I need to do bring it to light, this thing that has remained “Unseen”. Yet the underlying energy is positive. Because as I look back now and read the words over the chorus I can tell that I knew in my heart I would eventually break free from that stronghold. And I did!
Unseen
One of my favorite things to do in my writing is to use visuals, almost make a movie out of the song for the listener to watch as they listen. Maybe my most visual song is “Smothered”. While the song “Smothered” is directly related to my memories, anyone who has ever been wronged can relate to the idea behind it. And the idea is this…. Wondering if the person who hurt you ever takes the time to think about what they did.
Just to give you a few examples how my memories gave me the visuals for this song. In my situation the two people who had hurt me as a child had grown up to become somewhat “gear heads” or the mechanical type. That’s where the first visuals come into play. The lyrics that gave the song title were “looking for something smothered in oil, beneath the car and starting to boil, the thoughts of a man uncertain to hell, for the truth he done… and hidden so well”. In my eyes this would be my tormentors at work covered in oil maybe, or hopefully, regretting what they did.
The visual picture I depict in the beginning may be very cliché but none the less true. “Bits of paper lying under the bed, thoughts things from your head” this would be all the notebook paper that you may have spent hours pouring out your heart only to crumble them up and toss hem to the floor in rage. Or if you want to go deeper in that, the pages could also be the time, years, you spend toiling with anger and hurt. They keep adding up until you can’t take it anymore.
This song gave me a safe and aggressive way to deal with my anger and emotions as I battled coming to terms with my past. It’s funny because as time went by and I was “healing” and moving on from a lot of the anger the song, like a few others, took on a new meaning and even had an important word change. In the title line “looking for something smothered in oil, beneath the car and starting to boil, the thoughts of a man uncertain to hell, for the truth he done… and hidden so well” In the original song I used the word “condemned” to hell. And as I’ve come to the other side of this thing I don’t feel that’s the right word anymore, so I changed it “uncertain” to hell. I’d like to believe we all have a choice how we spend our energy. I got tired of spending mine in anger over what someone else did.