Jimmy Buffett's 1994 Halloween ditty "Vampires, Mummies, and the Holy Ghost" is a catchy calypso tune. I'd never listened to the words until this year but now it has become a bit of an earworm. It speaks of fear, and of the projections of fear. It makes me wonder about the song's trinity.
Blood-suckers, too tightly-wrapped mothers, and religious figures? Humorously, maybe. The song may be no more anti-religious than it is anti-psychoanalysis, and sometimes a mummy is just a mummy.
Vampires and mummies were, at least at one time, mainstream Halloween costumes, along with the pirates, Frankenstein monsters, ghosts in bedsheets, Peter Pans, bums in rags, Wendys, Raggedy Ann dolls a-walk, a vast assortment of glittering princesses, and angels with cardboard wings. On beggars' night, the streets were full of them, the one night of the year kids were free to be the Other--with free candy too.
No one appeared as anything religious on Halloween when I was a kid, unless you counted the angels and the occasional devil.
Years later, I went to a Halloween dance where a pregnant girl dressed up like a nun, but it wasn't the normal thing you came across. I remember seeing university lads wearing parrot heads, obviously Jimmy Buffett fans. A coed in a Freudian slip. A couple of mature women in black tights with pussycat tails. A crocodile with a clock on his stomach, obviously a reference to Peter Pan.
Like Peter Pan's lost boys, these were adults who, in their fantasies, were denying Time. The crock of it is, time pursues the adult Capt. Hook in their midst relentlessly. The middle-aged pirate fears nothing more than Time. For beyond it lies the annihilation promised by that skull and bones on the pirate's flag.
Our inner fears and suppressed desires find outer projections all right, but what else are Halloween costumes for? And in that spirit, I've come to admire this song.
You can hear it on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRvDLceTAdU
at this link.
Looked in my laptop what did I see?
A flashing message said, today: therapy.
Rather walk through fire
Than converse with my shrink,
But I'm getting better--
That's what some people think.
Talk about denial
And dysfunctional things,
Head's like a bell,
somedays it dongs and it dings.
My brain playing tricks on me,
It likes to shift gears.
Spend lots of money,
But I'm tackling my fears.
Vampires, Mummies and the Holy Ghost,
These are the things that terrify me the most.
No aliens, psychopaths or MTV hosts
Scare me like vampires, mummies and the Holy Ghost.
Had a dream last night,
Took a time traveling ride
Back to my childhood
Where those monsters reside.
They snack on innocence
And dine on self-esteem,
But I like to be in touch with what makes me scream.
I was never ever frightened
By the murderer on our block.
He nurtured orchids and raised hamsters.
The neighborhood is still in shock.
So many dragons lurking out in the fog,
So many crazy people mumblin' monologues.
It's not the tales of Stephen King that I've read,
I need protection from the things in my head.
Vampires, Mummies and the Holy Ghost,
These are the things that terrify me the most.
No aliens, psychopaths or MTV hosts
Scare me like vampires, mummies and the Holy Ghost.
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