Whistling in the Dark: Childhood, Psychic Powers, and Belief
Exploring They Might Be Giants' 'Whistling in the Dark,' childhood memories, psychic powers, and how beliefs shape reality in this personal and philosophical reflection.
BOOM: The Song That Hits You Like a Drum
The 14th song on the Flood album arrives with a booming bass drum and marching drum beat. It’s Whistling in the Dark by They Might Be Giants, and it brings with it paradoxes, large chest-mounted bass drums, and complicated emotions surrounding my childhood.
Whistling in the Dark tells a brief story of a person who, as John Linnell put it, “is comfortable and capable in the role of being what he's like.” However, as Linnell echoes philosopher David Hume, “an 'is' is not an 'ought.'”
Cinnamon Rolls and Tarot Cards: Childhood in a Psychic Shop
Between grades 5 and 6, I spent a lot of time after school sitting with my little sister (and sometimes a friend) in the food court of a place in Tacoma, WA called The Freight House Square. This indoor strip mall was full of small business owners running their own niche shops. One such business was Peggy’s Cinnamon Rolls, which, to this day, remains the greatest piece of dough I’ve ever eaten.
It was also home to an establishment called Crystal Voyage. A shop that sold energy-infused gems, trinkets, incense, and tarot decks. Crystal Voyage also employed my mom as a professional psychic. Most days, after school, I’d do my homework in the food court of this eclectic bohemian wonderland while my mom was paid to do tarot card readings. This is all part of a much longer story about me being taught that psychic powers ran in our family, my personal tarot deck, and my overall “normal” childhood—raised in an amalgamation of beliefs rooted in New Age spiritualism and Wicca.
The Freedom to Believe: And the Pressure to Be Special
I was free to explore any religious or philosophical belief that interested me, and I often did. There were no wrong answers. Mostly, I’m thankful for that kind of freedom of thought. The part that really messes you up, though, as a kid desperate to feel unique or special, is being told by your parent that psychic powers exist and that you have them. May as well tell me I could pack my bags and move into Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
While I’d like to think that all the religious freedom I was granted gave me a leg up on the kids indoctrinated since birth, the reality was that I was being raised and influenced by a person who wasn’t living in the Consensus Reality. This meant that, at some point in my life, I was destined to experience cognitive dissonance and realignment. That shift started around the time I got the Flood album, as my relationship with my mom began to rapidly evolve (decline).
A Poisoned Mind: The Lyrics That Hit Too Close to Home
I think of this every time I listen to Whistling in the Dark, because the song starts with a verse that resonated profoundly with me at the time:
A woman came up to me and said
"I'd like to poison your mind
With wrong ideas that appeal to you
Though I am not unkind"
Teenage me heard this lyric and thought, “This is my mom.” She had wrong ideas that poisoned my mind from an early age, although she never felt she was being unkind by instilling them in me.
Hume’s Wisdom: Finding Peace Between ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’
Much like the protagonist in Whistling in the Dark, who finds himself paradoxically comfortable in his own non-consensus reality, my mom existed in a reality shaped by her belief in psychic powers and New Age spiritualism. For her, those beliefs were an undeniable "is." But as Hume reminds us, an "is" is not an "ought." My mom believed these things—and passed them on to me—but that didn’t mean I was obligated to carry them into my adulthood. That cognitive dissonance, the friction between her world and mine, was the sound of that drumline marching offstage. Her version of reality wasn’t necessarily mine to inherit, even if it shaped the beat of my childhood.
Like the song's closing horns, our relationship faded, but this song stayed with me—reminding me that I could listen to my own mind, and make peace with the distance between what "is" and what "ought" to be.
A final question to you
What’s a belief or idea from your childhood that you’ve since re-examined? How did it affect your relationship with family or friends?
I was raised as a Christian. My family spent several years as part of a Southern Baptist church in Oklahoma. I still don't know to this day why we just up and left that church all of a sudden (we joined when I was 3, and I'm pretty sure we left before my 9th birthday.) We continued to practice Christianity in the home, but Mom stopped going to church altogether by the time I was 12. When we did go, it was usually to one of the Methodist churches in OKC.
I genuinely believed what I was being taught in the church. It took me many years to even consider that I had received inaccurate information about my faith. I spent years trying to find a 'church home' in the hopes that I'd finally find a place where I fit in. I was in my late 30s before I even seriously questioned my belief in Christianity.
At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm agnostic. It's not spite, it's just that I've had time to actually think about the validity of what I was taught, and why I held on to beliefs that didn't actually make sense. I feel like much of what I was taught wasn't about making me a better person - it was meant to make me subservient and keep me too busy to actually consider whether or not this belief system was doing more harm to me than good.
You need to write a memoir