The Album: The Lion and the Cobra Sinead O'Connor
The Story: I actually had help with this one! Yay for friends with better memories. So Nathan's parents had one of those old, massive satellite dishes that could pick up alien signals from space. It could also pick up music stations from Canada and one day he saw the video to "I Want Your Hands on Me." He told me about it and then found the cassette at Wal-Mart. That night we listened to the whole thing over the phone.
It was what I needed in that moment. I'd sustained my bravado as long as I could. I was finally in a safe place and sometimes when you're in the safe place, you can finally let go and feel the pain you've been holding back.
Albums like Lion and the Cobra let you hurt. They let you rage. The great thing about Sinead with this album is that she was completely unapologetic about her emotions. As much as I hate it when people just vomit their emotions all over everything, I DO love it when they channel said emotions into art.
This album explores loss beyond death, glorious passion, brutal anger, group anger, and hopelessness. It ends with a kind of acceptance, a way to sort of lift you out of the storm you've just been through. This album was my middle school therapy and it helped to keep me alive.
Thank you to: Mr. and Mrs. Billy, their big ol' satellite and their beautiful son.
The Lesson Learned: With this album, I learned catharsis. During the years of the last two of mother's husbands, I'd just been in survival mode. This album helped me to begin to let go of those repressed emotions. Not all of them, honestly the process of writing this has been an even greater catharsis and I've remembered a lot of things that I'd blocked out for years. I feel more whole now, but that healing process started with Sinead.
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