No Man's Woman

This is going to be a non-fiction entry.

I was thinking about why my Theme Song (No Man’s Woman, by Sinéad O’Connor) is my Theme Song. The song deals with the narrator’s desire not to be “no man’s woman,” and in the end she makes a reference to Jimi Hendrix and it ends up being an allusion to how music is helpful. You would think, from listening to the song, that I have had really bad experiences with romance. But this is really not true at all. I do have a boyfriend, but he’s one of the nicest people I know and one of the least domineering.

Now, writing this essay has made me think about what else I might like about the song’s message (I know what I like about the music itself.) Writing this essay, in such tight constraints, about something I don’t want to write about, doesn’t give the feeling I love in writing. When I write, I want my writing to express how I feel, and, in general, writing makes me feel like I have flair. Like this picture, but personified. My mental image is of someone—not that I particularly like dancing, but it’s a good image— dancing a flamenco. In writing, I wouldn’t say “I’m able to express myself,” because that’s not the point. Expression is secondary. The important thing is that I get that feeling of independence.

This essay, coming back to the point, is as restrictive as anything I’ve ever had to write before. It makes me long for English 9 again. There were several virtues of that class compared to this essay: One, if the prompt wasn’t perfect, it was too lenient, too…easy. That allowed me to expand; for instance, there was never a really well-set word-limit, like 800 words. So we can conclude that I’m being lazy. Two, there is a difference in arguing for your piece in a public school system with a teacher you actually know and arguing for it in a course your parents are paying for through the nose with a teacher you don’t actually know very much at all. English 9 granted me, even in my least favorite papers, significant leeway.

So how does this come back to No Man’s Woman by Sinéad O’Connor? Well, I decided, in the course of my realization that I don’t like this essay because it’s too restrictive, that this song is my Theme Song because it represents Freedom and Independence.

Now you know why I don’t usually write non-fiction.