By DiscoMonster
Did the woman who gave birth to my maternal grandmother feel shame? Did her well-to-do family feel shame as they sent her daughter to a poor house in Manchester? Did the French sailor even know he had a child? Why was their Shame so engulfing that a hundred years later they wouldn’t want to know my grandmother’s family line? At the very least, I hope my great grandmother felt the passion that overcomes the societal shame described in Evelyn “Champagne” King’s brilliant song about the complex relationship between lust, love and shame.
Guilt was passed down the family line. My grandmother said she was a pogrom orphan because she feared others knowing she had no name. Made to feel shame for her poverty and being born out of wedlock, her story and that of millions of others was empathetically sung by Diana Ross in the perceptive Love Child. Grandmother’s shame never left her though. It defined her whole existence.
Did she feel shame about falling pregnant to Charles? It released her from the poor house and she gained a royal surname – her deferential, romantic fantasy. However, Charles was alcohol and good times except when they were bad times and fists. Did he ever feel ashamed back then? Like Jay Z in 4:44 he was always afraid she might embarrass him even while he fucked around. Unlike Jay Z he never admitted shame. He was able to look his seven surviving children in the eye at her funeral while demanding part of the estate of the woman he had eventually abandoned. He left her nothing but syphilis when he walked away.
Like syphilis, shame can flow down a family line from mother to daughter. It can be weaponised to manipulate and control. My mother tried. Did the best she could but it was never enough for her own mother. When Ian Curtis sings, “I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through. I'm ashamed of the person I am,” I recognise expressions my mother used to hers. Joy Division’s brutal Isolation gives way to Michael Kiwanuka’s Cold Little Heart. He’s also been ashamed all his life. He can’t stand himself. However, he has a path to redemption a bond with another to lift him from emotional poverty. He sounds like my mother singing to my father before her heart went cold again.
Michael Timmins of The Cowboy Junkies helps me understand a little of the complexity of shame running through my maternal line. The Timmins’ adopted daughters came from orphanages in China. While visiting the country, the daughters discovered they were worth nothing more than A Few Bags of Grain and that the shame of abandonment and being a “worthless girl” would have stalked their every waking day and fitful nightmares. But there is fighting spirit in the song that refuses to allow the next generation to suffer in the same way. I think my mother had that spirit and succeeded despite her circumstances, disadvantages and shame.
The Triumph’s We Don’t Love Enough asks us to see that a lack of care and love for others is something that shames us all. Nevertheless, how can you shame the shameless? Sadly, Young Fathers are still asking that question of the barefaced lying “cunts” they have the misfortune to meet. “It ain’t right! What do you do to feel better?” Well, the shameless seem good at shaming, especially woman and those different and born into less privileged positions in the world’s societies.
But there’s rising a defiance, questioning and rejection of the old shames; Sudan Archives embraces herself in Selfish Soul while Billie Eilish asks, “Is my value based only on your perception of me? Is your opinion of me Not My Responsibility”.
Making the leap from the personal to the political Sault’s Wildfires says they will never show fear and that it is oppressors who should be ashamed. I wish such bold voices had been louder in the era when my ancestors were born; that my mother would not have been so ashamed of her Jewish nose she reshaped it to follow my father’s Anglo-Saxon straightness, after all, he was never ashamed of her. I wish we could collectively face the shame of our past and present, such as the sectarianism cited in Scotland’s Shame – the nerve-jangling but compassionate instrumental by Mogwai.
Then I think of grandfather Charles and his macho pride that could never tolerate being the butt of the jokes. The aggression that would follow when he was made to feel shame and his violent physicality when made fun of. Oh, how he would have laughed along with Lord Melody during Wau Wau and used it to make fun of others and make himself feel superior. But on her deathbed my grandmother shamed his male pride when she told him, “You think you were the only one, but Henry got there first.” Oh, how I like to think she had finally lost her shame.
Pangs of Shame Playlist:
Evelyn “Champagne” King – Shame
Diana Ross and the Supremes – Love Child
Jay-Z – 4:44
Joy Division – Isolation
Michael Kiwanuka – Cold Little Heart
Cowboy Junkies – A Few Bags of Grain
The Triumphs – We Don’t Love Enough
Young Fathers – Shame
Sudan Archives – Selfish Soul
Billie Eilish – Not My Responsibility
Sault - Wildfires
Mogwai – Scotland’s Shame
Lord Melody – Wau Wau
Spotify Longer List:
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic: Scandalous! It's songs about shame. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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