"I always thought 'Amazing Grace'..."

"I always thought 'Amazing Grace' was a song about a blind woman who got to see and I didn't realize what the big deal was about, like why everyone was singing it all the time.

Then I was in this music class and these two girls that I had to write a song with wanted to use that as like the backbone, and when I was like, "WHY would we use a song about a blind woman for this?", they just looked at me for like a minute and then finally started laughing.

They tried to explain to me what it was about but I really didn't get it. But I also felt really kind of dumb for not being clued in on this whole church song that everyone seemed to get, so I thought about it in the back of my head for a few years and finally it seemed like it was about some sort of spiritual sense or something that people are capable of experiencing or receiving or something like that.

That made it a bit easier for me to get that song, and now I really like it and like thinking about this experience that can like transform anyone and anything, I guess kind of like me, huh?

But it really took me a long time to get past the material idea of just this woman just not needing reading glasses anymore and everyone singing about it in church."

(~Julia Marshcan, into my taperecorder, Spring, 1997)