Speaking of Speaking in Tongues

April 10, 2006

Speaking of speaking in tongues, Deborah and I finally went to see the documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, last night. Simultaneously funny and disturbing, we both found ourselves laughing at what the row of people in front of us seemed to feel were the wrong moments. Daniel Johnston's songs can be rather haunting, as seen in a scene where he performs at a dinner party with friends. He was bawling his eyes out while singing about playing cards with the Devil. The guy in front of me seemed especially touched by the raw emotion. I was, too, but at the same time, the childlike simplicity of the lyrics struck me as funny, and I couldn't help but laugh. The guy in front of me shifted in his seat and sneered over his shoulder as if to tell me I was an insensitive clod who didn't understand what I was watching. If that's what he thought, he must've thought it double for Deborah, because the lyrics threw her into a fit of giggles she had to bite her fist to control.

We might've been the only people laughing at that particular scene, but watching Daniel Johnston seemed to bring out so many conflicting emotions in everyone that it wasn't unusual for somebody in the theater to let out a belly laugh from left field while the rest of the audience was dead quiet.

"He makes you feel so many different things," Deborah said afterwards, which was undoubtedly true of the entire audience. Still, since Deborah could so closely identify with Daniel's fundamentalist upbringing, it may have added an extra level of appreciation for her. "I love the way he takes the fundamentalist stuff and twists it all around."

There are plenty of examples I could cite from the movie to illustrate what Deborah is talking about, but instead, I'll quote Daniel from an interview I found while searching for the lyrics to Don't Play Cards With Satan, He'll Deal You an Awful Hand.

"A long time ago, when there was God and there was Jeremiah the Bullfrog, Satan took Lucifer and entered Lucifer and made him jealous of Jeremiah. Lucifer said something like, ‘He thinks he's better than him.’ And God killed Jeremiah. And Jeremiah's ghost is Casper the Friendly Ghost. And Jeremiah is John Belushi."

Can't really argue with that.