Robyn's Secret Passage

When I was 14 my English teacher was pretty cool. She was probably only a couple of years out of teachers college, young, hip and had a kind of punk hair style.

She decided that instead of getting us to analyse poems instead we’d be allowed to bring along our favourite songs and analyse those.

This sort of thing can cause problems – a couple of years later when my brother was doing the same thing he took along an NWA tape and the teacher started playing “Fuck the Police” until she heard the lyrics and quickly stopped it.

There’s also the problem that many songs 14-year-olds are into don’t have many meaningful lyrics. I remember reading the lyrics to various popular songs in Smash Hits. Many times there’d be things like this:

Ride on time (x8)
Wo-oah
(Ad lib to fade)

But after sorting through the selection of tapes that my classmates had brought along, my teacher decided on one that she thought would work. It was “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘n’ Roses. A track off their recently released album “Appetite for Destruction,” it was a favourite amongst the metallers in my class.

She put the tape on and we listened to the first verse:

Welcome to the jungle
We’ve got fun ‘n’ games
We got everything you want
Honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find
Whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey
We got your disease

The first question she asked was if we knew what the jungle was. There was a bit of discussion, someone suggested that the jungle represented society, and most people agreed with this. Then someone else suggested that maybe it was drugs, and the class was more or less split between society and drugs. It was time for the chorus:

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed

It was decided that this meant that society and/or drugs, which had previously wanted to be nice to you, now wanted to be nasty and see you suffer. Things were still a bit vague, so we moved onto the next verse:

Welcome to the jungle
We take it day by day
If you want it you’re gonna bleed
But it’s the price you pay
And you’re a very sexy girl
That’s very hard to please
You can taste the bright lights
But you won’t get them for free

It seemed that this verse was directed towards a female. This could that symbolise that the jungle/drugs/society was a male and the thing it was talking to was a female, or it could be a specific man and woman, like Axl Rose and his girlfriend.

Things got a bit awkward when it came to analysing the line “you’re a very sexy girl”. The jungle/society/drugs was obviously judging her outward appearance. But things got more hectic with the next chorus:

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
I, I wanna hear you scream

It was that line, “feel my serpentine”. What was a serpentine? There was that river in London, and it could also mean something like a snake. But he wanted her to feel it, he wanted her to feel his snake-like thing. He wanted her to feel his… er, time for another verse.

Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
You learn to live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You’ll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me

The mention of living like an animal (a serpentine?) was impressive as it took the jungle metaphor one step further. But unlike a real jungle that might be ok to live in, this one got worse every day. It was interesting that the jungle was enticing the possible female, but also letting her know that she couldn’t have anything from it.

And when you’re high you never
Ever want to come down

This worked strongly in favour of the jungle-as-drugs supporters, but the jungle-as-society crew pointed out that high didn’t have to mean high on drugs. High society, perhaps?

You know where you are
You’re in the jungle baby
You’re gonna die

This could mean that the female person/metaphor had overdosed on drugs/society. But if it was drugs, why would drugs want a person to die? Wouldn’t the drugs want a person to stick around so they could take more drugs? Or would that only be a drug dealer. Wait, maybe the jungle was a drug dealer? The chorus was repeated again, then the song ended with:

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
It’s gonna bring you down-HA!

Ok, so there’s this person who might be a woman or it might be something that is being symbolised as a woman and she’s being talked to by the jungle who might be drugs or society or possibly a drug dealer, and is probably male. The jungle wants her to have a good time, but says she’s going to die. He also thinks she is sexy and wants her to feel his serpentine.

By the time the bell rang I’m not sure we were really sure what the song was about. But the important thing is that the ability to analyse pop song lyrics has stuck with me. When I’m sitting around watching music videos and there’s that boy band singing, “you’re making it hard for me,” I know exactly what they mean.

The Queen was in town. The old man in bakery down the road was excited about it. My friend Selwyn was excited about it. The two Italian fellows who asked me for directions to Government House were excited about it.

Normally I wouldn’t care all that much about it, but Selwyn was planning on going down to the harbour to take some photos, so I decided to meet him down there for some royale excitement.

It was a hot afternoon and the plaza and street was filling with people. There were a few who’d come prepared with flags, flowers and frocks. I had come only with the idea that I wanted to cause some trouble. I wanted to yell something. Or maybe throw something. I wanted to be a twisted firestarter.

I realised I didn’t have anything to throw. There was a building site behind me and I could have probably found something there to throw, but there were these vehicles full of men in riot gear who would have probably smacked me good and proper if I’d hurled a chunk of concrete even remotely in the direction of the Queen.

So I tried to come up with something to yell. I couldn’t think of anyone unjustly imprisoned to protest about (”Free Lance Ng!”). John Banks was there, complete with his mayoral chains. I considered yelling something at him, but there’s a whole protest coming up for doing that, so I refrained.

There were numerous police there, mostly acting as crowd control. I considered reciting some NWA lyrics, but the cop standing nearest me seemed like an OK guy.

While I pondered what to yell, a couple of women in their late 40s pushed in next to us. They immediately started whinging. Heading their list of complaints was that there were too many police. Instead of acting as security and crowd control the police should have been out catching burglars, apparently.

Next they complained when the Queen’s car stopped right in front of them. They cheered (yes, actually cheered) when it moved on, but soon realised that it was the Queen Car and started complaining that it should move back a bit.

Three police officers and three men in suits were standing in front of the car, so they immediately started whinging about that. Was it really necessary, they asked? Did there really need to be six people standing next to the car?

Eventually a little elderly lady wearing a bright blue suit hobbled into view. People cheered, people clapped, a man near me commented, “she looks quite good, for a change.”

The Queen picked up bouquets of flowers from various onlookers. The two complaining women kept yelling out for her to look at them.

I was still feeling kinda punk. I tried to think of some appropriate song lyrics. The Smiths’ “The Queen Is Dead” would have required too much to be quoted to make a point. Quoting the Sex Pistols and yelling out “God save the Queen!” wouldn’t have had completely the wrong effect.

But then I was distracted. There was a bogan woman with permed blonde hair standing on the other side of me with two little girls. They had some flowers for the Queen. Just as it looked like her royal highness was about to get in her car and leave, a minder gestured for the woman to go over to the Queen. She quickly grabbed her girls and ran over and handed over the flowers, probably closer than any other person there had been.

The woman was really excited and smiling, her daughters were all excited and the Queen seemed genuinely surprised and delighted and gave a lovely friendly smile. She waved, then got in her car and left.

I found myself overcome with the wonderfulness of life. Everyone and everything was lovely, the Queen was lovely, the bogan woman and her daughters were lovely, and the whinging ladies were lovely.

Then I caught myself thinking this and felt annoyed that I’d missed my opportunity to, y’know, yell something. I felt it necessary to exact my revenge on society which I did by paying for the inner city bus zone, but riding into zone 1. Yeah, I’m a twisted fire starter.