VEGANGELICA

SPROING! Here I am, jumping into the conversation! I'm at work, but I'll take a tiny break.

Ahhh...good...the lyrics of "Wring" are *supposed* to be creepy. I'm glad that's how they come across.

The song is about a farm child who is being indoctrinated into the meat-eating culture she is forced to accept. The song shows the treatment of animals that most people in our culture (since most are eating meat, dairy products, and eggs) are supporting, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not.

There is nothing more chilling, I find, than being with people who feel they are kind even as they commit what I view as atrocities...and unfortunately, there are many examples where people relish the killing and torture of both humans and non-human animals, including livestock. Whereas I suspect most people who eat animals/animal products probably don't think about where their food came from, some become malicious toward animals...probably because this is a way for them to live with themselves hurting others...they almost blame the animals for being weak, as if animals deserve to die because of that.

In the song, the singer (supposed to be an adolescent) is seeing her family consistently ignore the needs of the animals in their "care" (including the desire of the animals for life) and she is consistently told to enjoy eating them and ignore what people have done to the animals as if it were trivial.

She sees what happens when another girl says she doesn't want to eat animals: the child is told to starve. So, she tries to eat the animals and animal "products" (pepperoni on pizza, at the end), since she has no choice. She does not live in a safe or loving world. That's the world I see around me every day, especially here in the midwest, where people put a happy face on animal products and never mention the cruel sides.

Her words are a jumble of our culture's hatred for and dismissal of animals, combined with a zealous Christianity and belief in "God is Good," which is rampant in the U.S. However, her sadness at the treatment of the animals underlies everything. Notice that she tries hard not to cry as her father cuts the head off the sickly hen. This attempt to shut down emotions is typical for farm kids, I've been told...they try to become steely and unaffected; the only other option besides embracing all the killing and the fecal matter and the death is to conclude that her parents, her society, her church, etc., are really like the devil, if there were such an entity as a devil.

The song is supposed to show how people can become sadistic (or are sadistic) toward animals, but the underlying message is that *anyone* eating animal products is complicit in what is being done to them and is endorsing and supporting this cruelty (described in the song) through purchases.

Here in Iowa, for example, workers recently were shoving objects up the vaginas of pigs. The pig industry immediately said, "Oh, we treat pigs humanely." And yet, in the U.S., piglets are castrated without anesthetic, their teeth are pulled out without anesthetic, *and* the little ones, the "runts," and the sickly piglets are killed by bludgeoning them...which is legal and endorsed by the pig industry. In the U.S., "thumping" piglets several weeks old is "performed" in a number of ways, one being that you take them by the back legs and bash their heads against a hard object several times.

Stone Birds, I would say the song *does* have grunge elements (discontent with society and disliking discrimination are elements of grunge, according to Wikipedia). However, VEGANGELICA is now just myself (I've gone solo!) and not a band, and I don't limit myself to any genre except that so far every song I've written is lyrical (based on lyrics and involving rhyming in some fashion).

AwwSugar, I have recorded this song (minus drums), but never have performed it in public, which would be hard since I'm doing all the parts! You can check out my contact information for the myspace link if you want to hear it. In all honesty, the "Wring" song even scares *me* when I listen to it!

--Erica