"Hurt" in Girl, Interrupted

After completing our reading of the memoir Girl, Interrupted, Mr. Lewenstein asked us in groups to contribute a song to a class soundtrack.  Our goal was to find a song or an artist that best represented the pain and suffering we just read about. 

The original version of the the song “Hurt” was written by Trent Reznor of The Nine-Inch Nails.  At the time he wrote the song, Trent was messed up from top to bottom.   Most of his fans must have already known he was a heroin addict, but in the dark lyrics of this song they learn of his issues with self-harm: “I hurt myself today /To see if I still feel /I focus on the pain 
/The only thing that's real..” 

In 2002 Johnny Cash covered this song  shortly before he died.  Like Trent Reznor, Johnny knew something about depression.  He was life-long drug addict.  To keep up with the rigors of his profession, he mixed amphetamine pills and alcohol.  He needed the speed to keep it going on the road.  He needed the booze to sleep.  At a certain point, the drugs were killing him.  He couldn’t even sing anymore.  What could be more depressing for a man like Cash?   

Country singer Kris Kristofferson once wrote a song about Cash with these lyrics: "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction."  The song tries to explain how someone with so much going for him could throw it all away.  Kristofferson could have easily been writing about Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted.  From her writing, Susanna seems very aware of who she is, but whether she is telling the truth is anyone’s guess.  Throughout the memoir, she seems to unravel. She becomes more frightened and confused of her condition. In the chapter “Bare Bones,” she bangs her wrists and bites her hands.  She believes she’s lost her bones.   She tells everyone she has no problem, but that’s before we learn she washed down a bottle of aspirin with vodka in an effort to kill herself.

The song“Hurt” matches up well to Girl, Interrupted.  Both works speak to fear, abandonment, and self-damaging impulses.

“Hurt” by Johnny Cash	Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
I hurt myself today  To see if I still feel  I focus on the pain  The only thing that's real  The needle tears a hole The old familiar sting  Try to kill it all away  But I remember everything	I began scratching at the back of my hand. My plan was to get hold of a flap of skin and peel it away, just to have a look.  I wanted to see that my hand was a normal human hand with bones…. …I put my hand in my mouth and chomped. Success! A bubble of blood came out near my last knuckle, where my incisor had pierced the skin.                                                  ( Susanna, 102)
What have I become  My sweetest friend  Everyone I know goes away  In the end  And you could have it all  My empire of dirt  I will let you down  I will make you hurt	Lisa always knew what she needed. She’d say, “I need a vacation from this place,” and then she’s run away.  When she got back, we’d ask her how it was out there. “It’s a mean world,” she’d say.  She was usually glad enough to be back.  “There’s nobody to take care of you out there.”                                                    ( Lisa,  22)
Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear You are someone else I am still right here	Now I would I say to myself, you are feeling alienated from people and unlike other people…. …When you look at a face, you see a blob of rubber because you are worried that your face is a blob of rubber.                                                    ( Susanna, 41)

Irony in His Blood - Alanis Morisette in M. Butterfly

In English 201, we read about opera legend Maria Callas.  Many say she was the perfect singer to interpret the tragedy of the Madame Butterfly.  Here, I select Alanis Morisette to voice the irony. 

And Isn't it "Ironic..." Don't You Think?

The voice of Maria Callas may be perfect for Madama Butterfly. Here, the lyrics from Alanis Morisette's "Ironic" fit nicely to the text of M. Butterfly: “And isn’t it ironic…” Many people have criticized Alanis’ interpretation of irony in the song. Irony is the use of words to express the opposite of what is expected. They say her lines are weird or funny, but they are not ironic. For example, “like rain on your wedding day.” Stuff happens. The weather on you wedding day may be unfortunate, but it’s not ironic. Still, I like the song. You can’t say that the lyrics won’t make you think about possibility and expectation. What goes through the mind of a ninety-eight year old man who wins the lottery? How can he expect to spend his money? He’ll probably have a heart attack trying to figure it out. In M. Butterfly, Rene must have felt the same way for his relationship with Song. He had waited his whole life for her, and when he finally found her in his arms, he didn't know what to do with her. For Rene, Song gave him everything that he had ever wished for, and it killed him. That’s both funny and cruel.

Alanis Morissette Lyrics – “Ironic”	David Hwang Text – M. ButterflIy
It's the good advice that you just didn't take Who would've thought, it figures...	This is the ultimate cruelty, isn’t it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it’s only air — too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.Why can’t anyone understand? That in China, I once loved, and was loved by, the Perfect Woman. ( Act Two – Scene 11 )
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife It's meeting the man of my dreams	The love of a Butterfly can withstand many things — unfaithfulness, loss, even abandonment. But how can it face theone sin that implies all others? The devastating knowledge that,underneath it all,the object of her love was nothing more,nothing less than … a man. (Act Three – Scene Three)
He won the lottery and died the next day It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay	My mistakes were simple and absolute — the man I loved was a cad, a bounder. He deserved nothing but a kick in the behind and instead I gave him … all my love … ( Act Three – Scene Three)

“Over the Rainbow” : A Plea to Escape a Dreary Life

In Mr. Lewenstein's English 009 class, we read the memoir Girl, Interrupted.  It's about a young woman trying to navigate her way through her mental illness. When her parents commit her to a mental hospital, she has to look inside herself to find out who she really is.  I liked the book.  After finished it, Mr. Lewenstein asked us to contribute a song to our Girl, Interrupted Soundtrack.  We were supposed to connect our music with our reading.  I thought a lot about it and this is what I came up with:

When I read Girl, Interrupted, I hear Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow” in the film The Wizard of Oz. Here, Judy played Dorothy, a young girl yearning to escape her surroundings in Kansas. In the memoir Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen finds herself trapped in a parallel universe (see chapter one.) Both girls are depressed and frustrated teenagers. They’ll do anything to end their misery. Here is what is the most cool part of this selection: The real-life Judy Garland is basically Susanna Kaysen.

From a very early age, she was pressured and pushed and manipulated into doing things she didn’t want to do. Judy’s life became a pattern full of drugs, heartbreak and self-destruction. When she sings “Over the Rainbow,” she is basically foreshadowing both the story of her life, and the tragedy of Susanna Kaysen.  In both works – The Wizard of Oz; and Girl, Interrupted – the song could represent the road to freedom. Both girls need to find a way out of their depression. To do so, they have to learn once more to believe in themselves. 


I know Dorothy sang the song  before the tornado hit the farm.  It was early on in the movie.  She believes she’s all alone in her world and dreams of a better place.

That’s why I believe “Over the Rainbow” should appear early in Girl, Interrupted.  You should hear the song in the cab on the way to McLean– maybe it could be Judy singing on the radio – as Susanna sits silent in the backseat with her eyes closed. At this moment, Susanna doesn’t know what to believe or who to trust.  Her parents have turned her over to a psychiatrist.  He’s diagnosed her with Borderline Personality Disorder.  Now she finds herself on the way to a strange, new universe.  I’m not sure if Dorothy was crying when she sang this song. Or, if Susanna was tearing up in the backseat.  But clearly, it’s a sad, sad moment for both girls.  It deserves a sad, sad song. 

Judy Garland’s  “Over the Rainbow”	Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted
Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby.	“Take her to McLean,” he said, “and don’t let her out till you get there.” I let my head fall back against the seat and shut my eyes   (“The Taxi”  9).
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue And the dreams that you dare to dream, Really do come true.	“In our parallel world, things happened that had not yet happened in the world we’d come from” (“Politics” 28)
Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly Birds fly over the rainbow Why then, oh why can't I?	“In a strange way we were free.   We’d reach the end of the line.  We had nothing more to lose” (“Bare Bones”  94).

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is sad and depressed.  She’s trapped in a an adult world where she has no say.   In the movie, Dorothy sings the song in the middle of a bland and gray landscape.  There is no color.  No movement.  There is nothing there that would remotely resemble happiness for a young girl.  It’s a little bit crazy that the movie star singing this particular song is also fragile and depressed.   At the time, Judy must have felt she had no control over her life.  Her mother pushed her beyond her limits.  The studio made her every decision.  She was seventeen  and worked like sixteen hours hours per day.   No high school.  No friends.   Every time Judy sang this song, she said she cried. She couldn’t help herself.  

Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" in Girl, Interrupted

“No, no, no,” means “No, no, no…”  I guess Amy Winehouse really meant it this time.  In July of 2011, they carried her body out of her London apartment.  But, they weren’t taking her to Rehab…

Forensics revealed  she died of a drug overdose.  I nominate Amy Winehouse’s  “Rehab” song to appear on the Girl, Interrupted  soundtrack.  Amy and Susanna are soul “sistahs.”  Their Bipolar Disorders join them at the heart.

Many of the experts I’m reading say Amy lived a life in denial.  From the age of 13, she was hooked on drugs and alcohol but never really grasped the severity of her addiction.  She often admitted that she might be a little manic-depressive.  I mean, everyone has mood swings.  Right?   Her friends, her family, her father, they all pleaded with her go to rehab, but she would have none of it.  So here comes the line from her famous song:  "They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no."  

Reading of Amy’s struggles is like reading Susanna Kaysen all over again.  Both of these young women evoked a sense of impending failure or doom, but like many bipolar people they also experienced these feelings of self-importance.  It’s like Amy  adopted her own stage persona.  Self-destructive, it’s who she is.  That’s what her fans wanted.  The catwoman make-up, the pin-up girl tattoos, the drug stories, and last but not least, all the craziness that came with. It’s probably combination of bipolar and drug addiction that did her in.  That’s a nasty cocktail.  Much in the same way, Susanna was also a Drama Queen. After swallowing 50 aspirin pills, she called up her boyfriend to let him know. Even though she was trying to kill herself, she still lived for the attention. 

I see a spiritual connection between Amy the rock star and Susanna from Girl, Interrupted.  When given the chance, they both choose to live in a “parallel universe.” Amy submits to the drug-addled rock star life: “I write songs because I’m (f-###)ed up in the head and need to get something good out of something bad.”  Susanna finds freedom and comfort inside a mental hospital.  She made sense out of her world through the writing of Girl, Interrupted.   

Here is a crazy meeting of the minds: In “Rehab,” Amy sings ” "I'd rather be at home with Ray" and "There's nothing you can teach me that I can't learn from Mr. Hathaway."  Ray, of course, is Ray Charles.  Mr Hathaway is the famous soul singer Donnie Hathaway. In these lyrics, Amy pays tribute to her idols.  Ironically, Ray Charles is also mentioned in Girl, Interrupted.     For at least a while, Ray’s “home” was McLean Hospital.  From the very same place, Susanna writes of Ray and Sylvia Plath:  “Did the hospital specialize in singers and poets,” she asks, “or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness…” To truly know the answer to that question, you would have to be crazy yourself.