Spirit in Action
Peter Alsop - Humor & Song as tools for growth, change and insight - Part 1
Peter Alsop does many types of work. He's an educational psychologist, a motivational speaker, recipient of 7 Best Children's Album awards, a trainer of therapists, counselors, teachers, parents and kids. He mixes humor and insight in profound, amusing and healing ways.
- Broadcast on:
- 08 Mar 2009
- Audio Format:
- other
I have no hands but yours to tempt my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old. I have no hands but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and to give, the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you I will be done. Fingers have I none to help I'm done. The tangled knocks and twisted chains the strangle fearful minds. Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeade. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind. Joining me today on Spirit in Action is Peter Alsop. Peter doesn't fit any neat cubbyhole. He's a musician and an educational psychologist. He teaches workshops on a wide range of topics, works with kids and parents, teachers, administrators, marriage and family and ADOA counselors and much more. He does vital and spirited work to heal and enrich our world. Welcome Peter to Spirit in Action. Hi Mark, nice to be here. How are things out there in Topanga, California? It's a gorgeous day today. It's 60 degrees, something like that. This way it's been the winter. It's okay if you send a bit of that over our way, what we have, 20 degrees, ice and snow. If you guys are the hope for the future of what with global warming and all, we're all going to want to come to Minnesota where it'll be a little bit cooler. I'll reserve a spot for you here and I'll clear. Thank you. Well Peter, you've certainly done a lot of good work over the years, and I think you may have started doing it subliminally. I don't know if your audience knew that they were being educated. But you certainly were planting important seeds in our thoughts. When I first heard you, which was back in 1980 at the Blue River Cafe in Milwaukee, I was wildly enthusiastic about your music. And then it was maybe a year or two later you announced you were going to become a psychologist. You're going to work with kids stuff. I was disappointed and it was kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around that transition. What happened for you in the course of your career to lead to this change of direction? Well, I think it was an epiphany I had late at night at the ice house in Pasadena, where I was playing at one of those, you know, everybody come and sing one song kind of nights, you know. And I was number 37 and the only people left in the audience, number 38 and 39, you know. And I thought, what am I doing here, you know. I go in and play a song or two and these people will turn their minds over to you and listen to you and give you their time and their life. And there's so much stuff going on out in the world that is just difficult for people to cope with. Wouldn't it be great if, when you were done listening to someone, me, and you got up, you had some skills to cope with some of the things in your life that you didn't have when you sat down? And I thought, what a good idea. So I also found that the songs I was doing are seen in a lot of mostly just silly songs. But I found that they did a song by Bill Steele called "Carbitch" and they did one by Larry Gross called "Chunk Food Chunky." And people really liked those because they had something to say beyond just being funny. And I thought, well, see, I'm picking up skills and learning things. And so, and I had a feminist girlfriend at the time and I would, you know, she'd bust me for doing something. Oh, yeah, I guess I was doing that. And I'd start laughing. And then I'd figure, well, she wouldn't be great if I could sing a song that brought this up. So some other guy didn't have to go through that pain. I just went through figuring this out and maybe he'd laugh at it and say, "Yeah, maybe I should pull my socks up and have a read." So that's why I started doing songs that had some content. You know, I mean, this is called "Spirit and Action." So it's like, how do you take action and bring stuff up and help people pick up some skills that they might not pick up other ways? Or it might be year before they pick it up if I could help them along by sharing some of what I've learned. I thought that would be neat. Most of the teachers in school that I love are the ones that we're entertaining. So if you're going to learn how to entertain and then have songs that will spread information, it'll be useful for folks. So I think that's where they came from. Can you give me an example of one of the early songs in that vein? A lot of stuff that I was looking at, a lot of what was motivating me to go into music, was, I would say, sexuality issues. You know, if you're a young man and you want to meet available female partners, one of the things, you always see girls screaming at guys with guitars and I figured, "Well, see, maybe I could do that job." So as I started playing and looking for different issues, what I was looking at a lot, particularly with a feminist girlfriend, was some of the gender issues. Some of the kinds of expectations people have of little boys as you grow up, as opposed to little girls. And little girls have their own stereotypes that they're sometimes crammed into by the society and by the expectations of their parents or other people. So I wrote a song called "It's Only a We We," so what's the big deal? It's a funny song because it sounds like it should be a kids song, but it's not a song you really sing for kids. If I play it at a school, the principal's phone rings off the hook after I see the kids go home and say, "We sang about We We today." So under the guise of it being a kids song, I really just want for adults to think about stuff, which a lot of my stuff falls into that arena. This is something that's been around lots of people have recorded it and sung it into vocals and circuits and stuff. But it's like "It's Only a We We," and it's just to bring up stuff to talk about, and it's silly, and even though people say, "You know, we don't like it," or what it means, it's embarrassing. They like the ideas of the song. They kind of get that, so we can let listeners make up their own mind, couldn't we? Agreed. We'll let them make up their own minds. The song is "It's Only a We We," and it's by my guest for today's "Spirit in Action," Peter Alsop. As soon as you're born, grown-ups check rear P, and then they decide just how you're supposed to be. Girls pink and quiet, boys noisy and blue. Seems like a dumb way to choose what you'll do while it's only a We We so what's the 50? It's only a We We so what's on the bus? It's only a We We, and everyone's got run. There's better things to discuss. Now girls must use make-up girls, names and girls, clothes, and boys must use sneakers, but not panty hoes. The grown-ups will teach you the rules to their dance, and if you get confused, they'll say, "Look in your pants!" It's only a We We so what's the 50? It's only a We We so what's on the bus? It's only a We We, and everyone's got run. There's better things to discuss. If I live to be nine, I won't understand. Like grown-ups are totally obsessed with their glands. If I touch myself, don't you do that, I'm cold, and it greet me like I might explode. Well, it's only a We We so what's the big deal? It's only a We We so what's on the bus? It's only a We We, and everyone's got run. There's better things to discuss. Now grown-ups watch closely each move that we make. Boys must not cry, and girls must make cake. It's all very formal, and I think it smells. Let's all be abnormal and act like ourselves. It's only a We We so what's the big deal? It's only a We We so what's on the bus? It's only a We We, and everyone's got run. There's better things to discuss. Everybody's saying it's only a We We so what's the big deal? It's only a We We so what's on the bus? It's only a We We, and everyone's got run. There's better things to discuss. Well, I didn't want any of you adults to feel left out, so I wrote a special verse just for you. Here it is. She walked to the market past brave Cavaliers. She tried to avoid them, they whistled and jeered. She gave them the finger, they gave her more noise, so she stopped, and she sang to those bright little boys. It's only a We We so what's the big deal? It's only a We We so why do you watch? It's only a We We, and everyone's got run. There's more to life than your crotch. Yeah, I think the things that that song brings up, it's generated lots and lots of discussion from people, and of course, and hopefully raises some consciousness. It's one of the things I played when I hadn't been aware that there was a feminist men's movement, and I haven't been writing these songs about things that my girlfriend and I were working on or friends were talking about or someone come up and I go, "Oh, that's a good song." It's one called "When You Ask Me First" about a guy who gets all nervous when his girlfriend becomes more assertive in bed, or maybe his wife in that shirt. It's not clear in the song by one or the other, and he can't deal the ends up getting ahead of the end of the song. A lot of people that marriage and family houses were buying that album, it was on my sleep at the helm album, which is my second album. They were buying it to play this humorous song to bring up something in one of their couple's sessions, and then get the band and the woman to share about how they feel about who's being assertive about the sexuality and where that goes. I wish my song for just had simple answers for people, but life isn't that simple, so what I try to do with this song is just get stuff out on the table so people can talk about it and walk away more informed, even if you don't have a resolution. So there is an opportunity when I find out about the feminist men's movement to actually go play my songs for a lot of these guys and have some really wonderful workshops and input from people and things that I hadn't been aware of. Some of my gay brothers that would talk to me about stuff about it, I had a song for helplessly heterosexual, and it was on my uniform album. Did you or do you get much negative feedback, much static for that kind of thing? You know, there's some subjects that some people just cannot see any humor in, and any attempt at humor will be treated as a slight. Well, when you say you just can't talk about helplessly heterosexual songs are a good example of that, I played that at the men's movement, and I explained after this, you know, I haven't had a chance to bounce any songs off of people that have spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff and living, so it's just from my single perspective here. So we can have a workshop this afternoon for anybody to come to, I'd love to have you come and give me your input on this stuff, so I can alter things if I need to, or maybe give me some ideas for a new song, so I'd love to do that. So we did that, and it was a really heated workshop, because there's some people that have been gay for a long time, were out of the closet, were comfortable with that, even though society is not necessarily supportive of that kind of lifestyle, certainly it wasn't 30 years ago, I'm still struggling. We have a lot more accepting of it than it was then. Even that's weird to think that society has to accept that lifestyle, instead of just being part of the fabric of our wholeness of us. But there are some people that were not out of the closet, there are some people that were just really angry about, you know, a straight guy singing songs and something where they heard people laughing, but it wasn't making fun of anybody, it was just laughing about some of the discomfort that straight people have dealing with the whole issue. Actually, you know, we hadn't talked about doing that one, but maybe we should play that song and we can continue this discussion when you think about that. Sure, let's listen to Hopelessly Heterosexual by my guest for today's Spirit in Action, Peter Alsop. Listen, you're one of my oldest and dearest friends, but you have to understand, you see that, well, I'm hopelessly heterosexual, I guess I'm kind of slow. The mom and dad are all I have, that's the only way I know, so I'm hopelessly heterosexual, I'm stuck with being straight. It's a man to man, I'll ask you not to ask me for a date. When I'm with you, I'm happy when you're with me, you're gay. I love you like a brother, but not the other way. Now I'm not scared to try it, but it's not my cup of tea. I never even thought of it 'til you brought it up to me. And now that I consider it, I'd rather stay repressed, 'cause I don't feel excited and the thought of you undressed. I'm hopelessly heterosexual, you know I'm not a tease, I'm a product of society, so don't be angry, please. I'm hopelessly heterosexual, and I hate to be a for, but I'd rather watch the Super Bowl and sit here and explore. I'm flattered that you asked me, but that's the way it has to be. Cupid's kind of stupid, he hit you and he missed me. But since we're on the subject, and you know where I stand, what exactly do you do? I guess use your hand, I mean do you, how does, what if, where will, from behind? Well, I just, you know it was. And never mind, I'm hopelessly heterosexual, and I don't mean to open, so don't hold it against me. And I'll be your best friend, no, don't hold it against me, and please be my best friend. So Peter, was that a song that got you a lot of heat? Well, as we were talking, this one, yes, there was a lot of discussion about it, there had been a lot of people that were the gay men's caucus got together, and some people were saying that they thought it was important that straight men speak up and started addressing some of these issues in ways, and that nobody would be made fun of, and other people are saying that he's not gay, he's, you know, I hear people laughing, and it just irritates me, it bothers me, it's not okay, there's so much pain around this, and he didn't go through it. You know, there are all these big discussions that were happening. A lot of them, outside of me, it was about the concept more than me being good or bad, or doing something wrong, or not wrong, or, you know, and I was listening to a lot of it, trying to stay informed about it. So, yeah, it sounded like grieving, you know, when someone loses someone that they love, people grieve in different ways, and so how do you deal with it? One of the hardest jobs I ever had was playing at a Compassionate Friends conference, where there's families that have lost children, and the people that hired me knew my work and had had, you know, a child die 25 years earlier, or something like that, or, you know, a long time they'd lived within. And one of them even said, you know, it's actually, I never thought I'd say this, but when Frankie died, I thought it was a blessing for our family. I mean, I didn't think it was a blessing then, but I see how it was now, because there was a lot of stuff we were not dealing with very well, and we weren't talking about, we were hidden from each other. But his death really required that we cope with some stuff, and it was the catalyst for us going into counseling, getting a lot more help so that we're still together today, and our bonds are really strong. If I do see that part of it, it's difficult to say your child dying is a blessing, but I can see that, and so a lot of it has to do with attitude and stuff that happens, but they hired me to come in, and so I thought, "Oh, this is great," and I played a bunch of songs, but there are some families here whose child had died, you know, two months earlier, you know, an infant death or something. And I do a song that I didn't think of as anything that would be upsetting, like no one knows for sure, which is about having hope, but they just felt like, "Well, I know for sure, and no one's going to tell me you didn't have a child dying." I went, "Well, because I'm trying to be careful about stepping on an emotional pose." So it's the same thing when you're dealing with sexuality, people have a lot of injuries and a lot of preconceived notions and a lot of attitudes about what's appropriate, what's not appropriate sexually, and it can really push emotional buttons for folks. So how to do that carefully is something that I try to pay attention to, and if I do a song that I use humor, particularly to help engage people to listen to something, if I'm going to do a song about short people, I want to make sure I find five short people, and I play the song for them and say, "What do you think was that offensive, that that hurt in some ways or something?" Because what I want to do is bring this subject up, not create more pain for people. You know, I'm thinking that if you come at something from a humorous point of view, it makes it kind of easier for people to try something on, to just look at it maybe and go on, not take it too seriously, not take it like they have to face it square on. And on the other hand, with a song like "Let the Woman in You Come Through," you bring up serious issues. In the third verse you say, "So you tell me that I'm crazy, and you know I don't like kids, especially little sissies." And the feelings there are so honest and raw. I think that perhaps is much harder for people to look at than with a light-hearted kind of chuckle, where they can look at it and go on their way. So does humor make it easier for people to generally look at things, to sidle up on them, and does it reduce the amount of heat that you get for bringing up the issues? Well, let's say lightness instead of humor. There's ways to do things lightly, and just bring them up and touch on them briefly, so that even though they have this darkness and happiness to them, like death with children, people don't know how to explain death to kids, so we don't even ever talk about it. But if you can just bring it up. Raise your hand to the area of the cat that died, or a plant that died, or you know if you know someone who died in the kid's glove, and I go, "Yeah, man, that makes you feel sad." And I can just brush over it lightly, but I brought it up. And now the kids know that if they need to talk about death, and I'm a safe person to go to, whereas a lot of classrooms teacher wouldn't bring it up, because they're going, "I'm not a person, I don't know how to talk about this stuff." So, again, I don't try to use humor or the lightness in order to avoid taking heat. I'm not afraid of heat. The heat would bother me, and what heat means, and the way that I think you're using it is somebody is upset at something that I did. I'm not really interested in getting somebody upset. What I want to do is bring up our commonality and say, "You know, here's something that I've been thinking about because it used to scare me a lot or still scares me a lot, and here's some of the thoughts about it, and I'm singing you the song because my guess is that some of you have thought about it." And you mentioned that the woman you come through, I'd love to play that because it was an important song and it really had to do with taking a look at how we have a balance of a lot of these things inside of us. We just aren't encouraged to recognize it, and don't find safe places to do that. You're holding in 'cause you're a man who never cries. I'm not as tough as you, my friend. But since you ask for my advice, let the woman in you come through. She's trying to let you know she's there. She colors everything you do, and the man in you gets scared. You like to dance. I've seen you dance when you thought no one was there. I've heard sorrow in your voice, but you laugh like you don't care. It's hard to hide your gentle side. It's a lonely way to be. Take it from a friend who knows. An old old friend like me. Let the woman in you come through. She's trying to let you know she's there. She colors everything you do, and the man in you gets scared. You'll fight to prove that you're a man. You'll fight to prove you're right. You work hard and you play hard, and you stay up late at night. Working hard's a way to hide. From the dumb things some folks say, but holding tenderness inside is only throwing it away. Let the woman in you come through. She's trying to let you know she's there. She colors everything you do, and the man in you gets scared. ♪ So you tell me that I'm crazy, and I know you don't like kids, especially little sissies. Yeah, I know you never did, but I've seen you with the tough ones. The ones the others all come down, and you know that they're the frightened ones, and you know 'cause you're like me. Let the woman in you come through. She's trying to let you know she's there. She colors everything you do, and the man in you gets scared. Let the woman in you come through. Be a different kind of brave. She'll show you love's the difference between a free man and a slave. ♪ That was Let the Woman in You Come Through by Peter Alsop, and I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. My guest today on Spirit in Action is Peter Alsop. Peter is an educational psychologist, a musician, a workshop leader on a range of topics. He's a father, a son, a partner, but my favorite aspect of his character is the way he comes at learning about deep, really significant issues from light-hearted or humorous direction. He's with us today via the Miracle of Electronics from Topanga, California. Peter, I absolutely love that song, Let the Woman in You Come Through, but I wanted to comment about my own trip with the message of the song. It was important to me, and you know, even critical, to learn to let the tender side of me, the vulnerable side, come through. I thought, and I think of myself as a feminist male, so it was very important for me to break free from the cultural chains that it slotted me into the tough, dominant, non-communicative male role. So your song was a gift in that transition, but it wasn't the end. I found that after I had accepted the woman in me, I had, in fact, overcorrected that I had rejected some parts of the man in me, stuff that was really me, even a gift of my gender, stuff that I had to reclaim as the next step in my growth. Absolutely. Another thing that would be parallel to that is finding a safe adult inside of ourselves. Everyone says, "You need to find your inner child." You know, and send their people that are really, I always felt like I wasn't touching my inner child. What I found was that I didn't have a safe adult a lot of times. My friend of mine was doing a book, and I said, "Are you going to take this to a publisher because your work is so wonderful?" He said, "Oh, no, they always screw you at the publishers. I'm not going to themselves publish it." "Well, your work is so wonderful. The publisher can get out to one." No, no. So we talked about it, and what we came up with was that her inner child had been abused many times beaten up, but people who just told her she wasn't any good or stuff wasn't any good, stuff like that, and her little kid was scared to go try again, now that she finished his book with a publisher. So she was in touch with the inner child, she knew how to be playful, and she knew the feelings of sadness and the fears of being scared, but to find a safe adult who can just walk up to your inner child, so you know what? I'm going to take you by the hand. Some of these publishers are not very nice, but some of them are really nice, and we're going to find one. We're going to go and talk to them and see if they want to do our book because it'll really help us out. If you get scared at any time or someone's not being nice, I will take you out of the room. We'll just get up and walk out. We don't have to stand there and take that. Okay? So fair enough. And there's kind of someone that can take care of the inner child so that you can go and you don't just blow the whole thing off because you're inner child is afraid and running your life. Was there a happy ending to that story? Did she find more power with her inner adult? Well, when we say happy ending, I don't know if she did, but I do know she did self-publish the book, but that might have been happy ending. I'm not sure if she went and talked to publishers. She might have. She might not. What was important for me was that we have the conversation. You see, that's one of the things about, it's like words that I'm always looking at words that are good and bad. I try to avoid those kinds of words because there's value to it. You know, how are you feeling? I'm feeling bad today. You know, feelings aren't bad. Feelings aren't bad or good. They just are. And when I put words on them like bad, there's all these other subtle messages my brain does. You know, if I think of being sad as a bad feeling, then I don't want to be bad or not supposed to be bad. I'm not supposed to have that bad feeling, so I don't feel sad when, in fact, I need to feel sad. I need to cry about something that's gone on. I need to feel sad because it's an emotion that makes me take a move. I need to move away from whatever it is or set a boundary about something maybe, or maybe I just need to feel the sadness and decide later if I want to take an action. But I need that information, and so the words that I use are really important. So when we're looking to be happy, you know, like that's the best outcome. Maybe she was still scared, no matter what she did. Maybe she's also someone who wasn't going to be happy for some reason she might have set up. I won't be happy until I have a million dollars on book sales, so maybe she's not happy still. You see where I'm going is that sometimes words can really lock us in to certain kinds of things that we don't want to get into that are helpful. I'll give you one more quick example, which is a term "spoil child," which is a term I don't use. I work with kids all the time, but I don't use that term anymore because when I use the term "spoil child," it does a certain thing to me. Probably everybody out there listening knows what a spoiled child is, but I'm not sure what that means. And what my brain does is when I think of a child as spoiled, it's like, "What do you do with me when the spoils?" You throw it out, so my brain automatically wants to throw this kid out, and that's not helpful. But tell me what the child does. Don't call them a spoiled child. Say, "Well, this kid, they scream whenever this happens," or they do that, or they were demanding. If you give me some verbs, then I can give the kid maybe some other skills to try to get what it is that they think that they need by using some other skills, which they might be more successful. But when they just call them a spoiled child, it doesn't give me any way to behave. You see, so in certain words, I'm just not using them throwing them out and trying to get verbs to help me because that gives me some way to take action. That's just it. That's right. You know, Peter, you started out as a performer, coffee house, concerts, that kind of thing, and then you became an educational psychologist, and now what's the kind of work you do? Is it performing? Is it workshops? And is it adults' kids? What kind of mix do you have in there? Mostly what I do is people call it too. I want you to come and sing for the kids because I've won the Best Children's Record Award about seven times from various groups and parents' choice in NASA, associated with independent record distributors, and stuff under record, and how they seem to win some kind of awards, which is great and delighted. They say, "Would you come and play for the kids?" And they go, "Well, yeah, I can do that, but it's going to have a minimum impact on their life." I think that the ideas are worthwhile enough to have more of an impact than just having them hear me once, and then it's out to recess and back to business as usual. If I can get my hands on the parents or on the teachers or the district superintendents, you know, I want to play for all the district superintendents in South Dakota, and out of the 30 of them, if only three of them got something that was important, that's going to affect hundreds of thousands of kids. I said, "Well, I had never thought about that, but yeah, I could do this differently with my staff and with the teachers and with the kids and how they relate to the parents." So an awful lot of what I do in terms of these days has been to keynote addresses at national conferences for social workers and marriage and family therapists, and I do grant rounds for doctors, and I do workshops for nurses and pediatric high-quality centers. And I do some a lot of stuff on chemical and co-dependency issues. I've trained in most of the major chemical dependency facilities, the Betty Ford Center, and Karen Foundation and Onsite and Anna Kappa Hospital and Sierra Tucson. So what I've found is that I'll go in and do one of these things, and then I try to do a community concert while I'm there so that I can actually model some of the stuff I talked with the grown-ups about during the day at the conference and show them how it can be playful with the kids and still address a lot of these tough issues, and help bring up some of the feelings so the kids can have a stronger feelings vocabulary so the parents get them if their child's sad, they don't need to just get up and stop being sad and grow up and be a big boy that being sad is part of being human, part of our legacy. And that if they don't know how to deal with painful feelings, that's one of the biggest things for substance abuse stuff. That's what substance abuse is about. It's about medicating painful feelings that are trying to surface. So I want my kids to have a really healthy feelings more carefully. If they're scared, they know what to do when they're afraid, and the part of that means modeling my own fear. When I was a guy, you're not supposed to be afraid, so it must be tough. Oh boy, yep, I'd show anybody out here feeling. You know, Peter, I wanted to talk about one of your specific songs. It's called "My Body," and I think that it originated in the context of women's rights, but I think it's been taken up as kind of an anthem by a number of different groups, including kids' groups. Can you tell me about the genesis of that song? Right, and actually it was for a reproductive rights march in Milwaukee. I think it was 1977 at a men's conference there. So I wrote it for that, and there were things that wasn't just reproductive rights, it wasn't just for women. My hands were made to hold other hands, not to hold guns at faraway lands. You know, my womb was made to make kids, and I pleased not to be forced by man-made laws and decrees. So there's a bunch of things that had to do with people having some rights themselves, whether they're little or big or whatever gender you are. And it's been called the Green Sum Theater, out of Vancouver, BC. I wanted to use that song, and they did a rewrite, and I added some verses to what they did, and we came up with some "My Body," one that's being used in self-protection programs for kids all over this country in Canada. United Kingdom in Australia, I've just been delighted to be around the world. Did you write the verse about picking your nose? Who else would write a verse about picking your nose? Why don't we play this song, and we'll talk about that, because there's some interesting stories about that. Sure. This is "My Body" by Peter Alsop. My nose was made to sniff and to sneeze, to smell what I want, and to pick when I please. My body's nobody's body but mine. Here I'm in my own body, let me in my mind. My lungs were made, no there when I breathe. I am in charge of just how much I need. My body's nobody's body but mine. Here I'm in my own body, let me in my mind. My legs were made to dance me around, to walk and to run and to jump up and down. My mouth was made to blow up a balloon. I can eat, kiss and spit, I can whistle a tune. No one knows my body better than me. It tells me let's eat, it tells me go pee. My body's nobody's body but mine. Here I'm in my own body, let me in my mind. Don't hit me or kick me, don't push or sub. Don't help me too hard when you show me your love. 'Cause my body's nobody's body but mine. You run your own body, let me run mine. Sometimes it's hard, send no one be strong. When the no feelings come and I know something's wrong. 'Cause my body's mine from ahead to my toe. Please leave it alone when you hear me say no. My body's nobody's body but mine. You run your own body, let me run mine. Secrets are fun when they're filled with surprise. But not when they hurt us with tricks, threads and lies. My body's mine to be used as I choose. Not to be threatened or forced or abused. My body's nobody's body but mine. You run your own body, let me run mine. Our bodies one by one voices her. We sing for freedom when we sing these words. My body's nobody's body but mine. You run your own body, let me run mine. It's interesting because you were missing the verse about picking your nose. Some people say, you know, I don't have a problem with this verse myself. But the people where I'm playing it in deep self, they're just nervous. They don't like it 'cause it's about boogers and it's gross. And I'm saying, exactly, that's why I put it in there. If you want to be a successful kid songwriter, you got to mention boogers and underwear somewhere and the kids know you're one of them and they listen to what you have to say. So, one of the things that I want to do when someone brings up that they're nervous about that is to actually talk about what is a dimension nervous about the verse goes. My nose is made just sniff and sneeze to smell what I want to pick when I please. And I say, what's the fear? So, whenever I went into a tough manner, I had to look at the painful feeling that's pushing the resistance. What's the resistance and where's it coming from? And as some people say, "Well, I just don't think it's okay to kick your nose whenever they want." I said, "This song doesn't teach that." He says, "It's smelling what I want to pick when I please." Well, maybe it does say they can pick it when they please. Is that something that we can then use to talk about this? Is it okay to pick your nose in front of people? Well, some people it's okay. My friend Bobby, who's five years old, also doesn't care the least bit whether you pick your nose. Your mom might care if you do it in public because she might be embarrassed that people think she didn't teach you the proper rules of etiquette. She might now want you wiping it on the couch. I mean, there's all sorts of things. But what a quorum we've created not actually teach the kids in the classroom or whoever, about where it's okay to pick your nose, why it's not, how people feel about it. We've had a really good discussion just on that little thing in the song. And some of the notes that I put in my CDs is ways to bring this stuff up and talk about them. I do that with my adult stuff as well as the kid stuff. Now it's a school teacher in New York City. A lot of the materials we had were racist. They were just white people. And what we found we could do is just take the book and take a look at it and say, "Okay, we're going to go through the pictures there and count how many times somebody has an apron on." And who it is, if it's mom or dad or one of the kids. And we go through it and we count. And there's always mom that'd be apron. Now let's count how many times someone's coming home or leaving home. And all the time when that was happening it was dad. And it was that, "Well, your family's like, what's your family like? Do your mom go out and work too? Obviously, it does. That's interesting." You know, this dad's up with the dishes. So we were able to have some discussions and awareness so that the hidden messages and the pictures weren't getting through to the kids. And it's the same thing with my songs. Or with that old saying, "If you got a lemon, make lemonade, how do you take something where there's something like the nose picking?" And instead of just saying, "Well, I can't play the song," which is actually the song. It's actually saved some kids' lives. I can't play the song because of the boogers in it. In fact, we're missing the point of the whole song if we're stopping playing it for that reason. Bringing this stuff up. You know, something Mark I like to do also is I do stuff with a lot of my adult audiences to try to raise consciousness. And I've got a song that I wrote that's called "Little Kid" that's on my uh-oh album. I just want that one. The Kids Music Web Award for Best Kids Record or something like that. So I'm just been delighted that when you put something out, people are now listening and acknowledging it. This is something that we should play this on and we can talk about why I like it so much and what it does with the people that are listening to it. So you want "Little Kid"? It's from the uh-oh album. So I'll do that. I'll spin "Little Kid" by Peter Alsop. I am just a little kid. I am just a little kid. But not for long. So they'll be a big kid. And they'll be a big kid. Big and strong. Big and strong. Next I'll be a teenager. Next I'll be a teenager. Yeah. So. Yeah. So. Then I'll be a grown up. They'll be a grown up just like you. Just like you. Just like you. But I won't hit my little kid. And something's wrong. When something's wrong. When I'm angry at my little kid. And angry at my little kid. Sing this song. A thing never. I'll say, "Hey, I love you little kid." "Hey, I love you little kid." When you act like a little kid. That's okay. But you look like a little kid. That's okay. I'm sorry I was mean to you. That's what I'll say. That's what I'll say. Hope I won't be a grown up who acts that way. Hope I won't be a grown up that way. 'Cause now I'm just a little kid. 'Cause now I'm just a little kid. So why act like a little kid? That I think a little kid. And that's okay. And that's okay. That's okay. That's okay. That's okay. Well in this song you'll notice. Thanks for playing that. It's a powerful song. The way I do it when I do it live is I sing a line and I point at the audience and they repeat the line after me. And we go through the whole thing like teenager, yeah. So and all that stuff. So isn't this fun? And then I get to the part where I see but I won't hit my little kid when something's wrong. And they're supposed to repeat it. And I know statistically there's people in my eye that are spanking their kids. There is. So that creates a problem for the person that's been singing along in the first part of it 'cause if they keep singing and they say I don't hit my little kid when something's wrong, that's not true. And that's what you call cognitive dissonance. They are hitting their little kid. If they stop singing then the people on neither side are going to know that they're beating their children. They don't want to do that. So they're not sure what to do. And it's really fine with me if they're a little bit uncomfortable. I'm not identifying them. This is their own internal cognitive dissonance. And hopefully, you know, when they hear the song, they can kind of think, you know, well maybe I do need to come up with some other kinds of alternatives for setting boundaries with my kid and maybe physical violence is a one of the ones I want to be using. I'm constantly trying to get ideas out through my kids' songs to the parents to say 85% of my kids' stuff is sort of covert parenting information. And of course, we can use the same kind of techniques with our children. There's an interesting one that my ex-wife used with my son when he was small. She taught him when he was watching TV and a commercial would come on. She would just teach him to say, no thank you, no thank you. And that's what he would do. He'd see a commercial and he'd say, no thank you, no thank you. And I think that empowered him to have the choice to not choose. Now, of course, since then, he's now 20, he's decided some of those things he does want. But it was an interesting technique for him to have as a young child. All right, I have a conversation. It is the same thing. We're talking about making choices and the stuff that we teach our little kids, you know. There's a song called Itchy Bitsy Spider that probably most of you know. And I play with that a little bit and talk about all the ideas that the spider climbs up the spot and the raindrops are out. And it was supposed to up the spot. And we went through it. And I said, I learned that 50 years ago, the spider's been doing this for 50 years. You know, over and over and over again, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. What's wrong with the spider? What are we teaching our children here? And they go, whoops. Well, whenever there's a problem, you always look for feelings, probably the spider's feelings. Maybe the spider was afraid to try something. No. I say, "Pew, raise your hand." If you're ever afraid to try something, of course people laugh, raise your hands. I say, "And now raise your hand." If you ever try something, you're afraid of them. You're fond of what's so scary. You raise your hands. I said, "So, you know, maybe the spiders need to walk through her fear." So I wrote a new song. It's called Itchy Spider that deals with that. Itchy Bitsy Spider was frightened by the rain. But Itchy Spider didn't have an Itchy Bitsy brain. She went to school and learned to swim. And then she went to shop. And this is what the Itchy Bitsy Spider went and bought. She bought an Itchy Bitsy tiny, whiny purple folk. It got the tiny silken ray on nice and shiny. Holes her all her legs and high knee. Then she went up to spout and waited for the rain. She felt a little nervous. And finally it came down came the rain. And washed her out to shoot. But she swam the raging rapids in her purple bathing suit. She scrambled off the water spout and gave her such a thrill. She laughed and humbled down again. Just like Jack and Jill. She caught the rain, drops in her mouth. She really loved the rain. She played all day. They're climbing up and sliding down again. So the Itchy Bitsy Spider went up the water spout. She down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun, but she wanted rain to bore. Cause the Itchy Bitsy Spider wasn't frightened anymore. No the Itchy Bitsy Spider wasn't frightened anymore. How was it that you pronounced bikini the first time in that song? It's called Artistic License Mark. I said bikini because it had a rhyme with high knee. And I was running out of rhyme. Well can I see your artistic license? I want to see if it's up to date and officially in force right now. I'm not sure if it's up to date or not. I better get reregistered huh? Yeah I guess so. You know Peter what I really like about that song is the way you convert something that's drudgery building this web over and over. And you convert it into a party time. You know I don't think Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn could have done any better. Well it's also for me it's empowering of our heroine. So she's not just like a slave to a convention that she can take a look and say I don't want to build. I'm going to build my web somewhere else to keep building it inside this bow. And it's going to get washed out when I build it somewhere else you know. Or not be afraid of the water or whatever. Having that courage to change things. And the courage I really, again I like to look at words a lot. But what does that mean? I mean courage is from the French word court which means heart. We have heart in your feelings. When people don't speak up. We talked about this a little bit before when they, it's hard to have courage when stuff when you're afraid. I do a lot of work at schools around bullying issues. You know where there's a bully and there's a victim and there's some amazing similarities between the two. You know a lot of the bullies behavior is driven by fear. You know they're afraid that if they don't take charge and push start the people around that people will know that they're afraid. So they come out with this angry outside and they're afraid inside. And the victims are just the opposite. They're afraid on the outside and it makes them angry on the inside. I mean look at the Columbine and some of that kind of anger. Think yourselves how you feel when you've just been bullied by someone and you didn't stand up for yourself. How angry you feel at yourself and that person. You know so there's some real similarities there. The interesting person to be the most interesting person is the bystanders. The rest of us who watch this stuff go on or who don't intervene. Or we don't know what to do probably most of us have seen some community. Spending your hit or yelled at in the supermarket. You want to intervene? If they do that one more time I'm going to step in. But we don't. Well and of course sometimes we do. I did step in in one case. There was a kid who was making a big fuss in a grocery line. He was, I want a candy bar. I want a candy bar kind of thing. A 10 year old or so kid. And trying to embarrass his mother into giving it to him to shut him up. And I walked right over to him. First I said to her this is for him not for you. So you don't have to worry about this. And I said to the kid you seem to be making quite a bit of noise. And that's bothering me. And I'd like you to stop making that noise which is annoying me. And the kid was just taken aback because evidently no adult had ever focused the attention directly to him. And let him have the discomfort of his actions rather than putting it on his mother. He kept some high statements. He didn't tell him he was wrong for doing it. He used to ask for information. All of that sounds really healthy. It has been the other way around. Or if there was a husband smack with a wife around this guy was at the 160 pound linebacker. I believe that that's wonderful that you did that. And that you might also intervene in this other situation. But sometimes going in and doing high statements can be a lot more scary if you're in, if there's a threat of physical violence. Some can have a gun. What do you do? How do you intervene then? And often it's generally there's a difference of power. And my point was not that people should be doing this. It's more that why aren't we taking a look at that. And I think a lot of it is because we don't know how to intervene. We could have been a mom yelling at her kid and we could go over to the mom and say you know your noise is annoying me. But then this was going to happen. The kid is going to get ragged later on because mom's lame to give. If you just do what I said to that person wouldn't have said anything to me. So a lot of us get stopped by going on. I don't know how to do this so that the outcome is going to be okay. And I don't feel good going home and not having anything. What do I do? And we don't train about this. So if we don't get much exposure about how to intervene or what to do with that. And that's what you do in your workshops. You know, give people tools to work on this kind of thing. Well, yeah. And part of it is I can throw out a couple of things that I might know. But I do something called Sculpting where people get up under feet and I have them sort of, it's not real playing. It's just representing stuff. And also people get up and represent feelings as well. It comes from my work with Sharon Wegshider, Cruz, and she was a protege at Virginia City. Some of the actual therapeutic sculpting techniques. I do workshops on that on my conference center and around the country. We're getting up to physicalizing so people can see it. And then I also can, and listen from the audience and go, what are you guys doing? You're in this situation. It's amazing. People have all sorts of skills that because we don't talk about these things, we don't share them. And so I create a form by doing this where people can share some of this stuff. And by the time we're done, we might have 10 different kinds of things somebody could have done. Now, you can walk out of that workshop and get in this situation with the supermarket that night. And none of those 10 things would be appropriate. You still might not know what to do, but at least you've got some other tools to go about so you didn't have when you started. And you might go home and say, well, I didn't know what to want to use. And think of something new. But at least the weariness is there and the exploration and curiosity to figure out what do I do if I run into that. That particular difficult situation, again, what can I do? To have courage to act out differently than other people and to take action, you know, spirit and action. To do that, none of those things could take some support. It really helps if you have a community of friends who will support your people that you can talk to about that. But it also is important to know how to deflect negative stuff that people are going to throw your way. You know, there's a great song called "You Ain't Been Doing Nothing That Ain't Been Called A Red" back when there's the communist stuff that everybody's worried about. You've got to call the communist and you'd be blacklisted and lose your job and your livelihood and, you know, you get executed for stuff. And then that word changed. And then it was, you know, somebody's an insurgent or somebody's a terrorist or something like that, where, I mean, it makes sense to me that some of the people that were calling terrorists, that label is going to be huge and including a lot of people who are in their own country, minding their own business, not doing anything. And another country comes in and takes over and tells you what to do and you're going, this isn't okay. And they say, "Too bad, this is the way we're doing it." And he resists that, and all of a sudden you become a terrorist. Whether you're killing people or even if you're a pacifist, you become a terrorist in the eyes of people who don't agree with you. And so the way that labels are used are really interesting. One time my little girl came home from Montessori preschool. He said, "Come on, it's time to go to bed. I haven't got a bed. It's time to go to bed. I haven't got a bed." "Let's go right now, you're going to bed." "Daddy, you're a faggot." "Wow, we're just going to get that. Do you even know what one is?" "No, but I don't want to go to bed." A faggot, actually, is another name for a gay person, which is an epithet. It comes from the word a faggot, which is a bundle of wood, which is what they used to wrap a bunch of sticks together in the woods. You could sell a faggot of wood to somebody. And they came from in the Inquisition in middle ages. They used to light the fires and they were burning witches with gay men. That's where the word faggot came from. He's four years old, so he has no idea what even gay means. But those kind of words can be very, very demeaning and undermining, of course. And the gay rights movement has come off, so we're not going to accept your definition of this word. We're gay. There's nothing negative about it. So the power of words is really incredible, and particularly if you're going to have enough courage and spirit to take action when you need to. We need to be armed at that. And there's a great song that was written by Ted Chadd and I redid the music into kind of a rigor to him called you. He'd been doing nothing if he had been called you gay. He was just kind of a take-off on me. He'd been doing nothing if he had been called a red. One day in school, a friend of mine sat all alone and cried. When I asked him what was wrong, he said his grandmother had died. He apologized for crying. And I said that it's okay, but when I put my arm around him, all the fellas call me gay. Well, you ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay. If you show a sign of caring, then you know it's what they'll say, so you might as well ignore it. Or decide that it's okay 'cause you ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay. One day I saw my uncles looking at a magazine. There were naked women whips and chains and things I'd never seen. They said, "What you think of this one, boy?" I said, "I think it's sick." They said, "Boy, you must be gay if you don't want to poke a chick." Well, you ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay. If you show a sign of decency, you know it's what they'll say, so you might as well ignore it. Or decide that it's okay 'cause you ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay. And then I went to college, and I studied modern dance. I went down to the gym with my tights beneath my pants, as I was working out. Some jock would whisper loud and clear, but the dancer loves his locker room for a man because he's queer. Well, you ain't been doing nothing. If you ain't been called a queer, you try out something new, well, you know it's what you'll hear, so you might as well ignore it. Or answer with a cheer 'cause you ain't been doing nothing if you ain't been called a queer. I like to work with kids and help them grow up strong and free, but when I became a daycare teacher, people said to me, "Can't you make the boys be tough and make the girls be cute? Can't you get a real man's job? What's the matter? You're a fruit!" Well, you ain't been doing nothing. If you ain't been called a fruit, if you work for sexual freedom, then you know they'll start the "Who?" Just remember there's a herding kid inside each jeering fruit, and you ain't been doing nothing if you ain't been called a fruit. Well, singing isn't my show, as everybody knows, unless it's country western, or you're wearing chain link clothes, but if it's smoke or opera, or style they don't know, you can bet your yo-de-lay, you'll be called a homo. Well, you ain't been doing nothing. If you ain't been called a homo, it's been said about a lot of folks from Brahms to Barry Como, so you might as well ignore it, or use it for your promo 'cause you ain't been doing nothing if you ain't been called a homo. Now I wonder why the things I do bring ridicule to me from rigid, frightened people in a land that's brave and free as for me to be a real man. Means give up fear and hate to sing along with arms around our brothers gay and straight. If that ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay, if you work for gender justice, then you know it's what they'll say, so you might as well ignore it, or decide that it's okay 'cause you ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you. Different pansy, friendly, faggot, very weird and wimp, sissy, strange, and sick, and when they say your wrist is limp, just give them a big smile, and let them hear you say that you ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay. That song was, "You ain't been doing nothing if they haven't called you gay," and it's one of many gems on Peter Alsopp's collection called "Ebeneezer Scrooge's Makeover." It's a kind of retelling of Ebenezer Scrooge's story, except that in this case, he's a shut down, homophobic, rather conservative and resistant dean of students at a college, and the ghosts come in and have him face up to the causes and the consequences of his attitudes. It's an excellent collection worth checking out. You've been listening to part one of a Spirit in Action interview with musician and educational psychologist, and all-round insightful person Peter Alsopp. You can check out Peter's work, his workshops, music, and more via his website, Peter Alsopp, that's P-E-T-E-R-A-L-S-O-P.com And come back next week for part two of my visit with Peter Alsopp. You've been listening to Spirit in Action. You can hear this program again via my website, northernspiritradio.org, and on that site you can find links and information and music and all kinds of wonderful things. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher cause for you than this. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. [Music]