"A disguise of self-deception hides my secrets perfectly..." -- "Perfectly Flawed"
"Perfectly Flawed. Perfectly Incomplete."
Ye gods, I love this song so much.
I know many of you (fans, friends, foes, managers, mudslingers, peers, puds, laymen, label execs, et al) were afraid and apprehensive when you first heard of this mysterious, diabolical apostasy. "Oh dear God!" they exclaimed. "She's singing a beautiful song with an incredibly wonderful message about self-love and self-acceptance. Well," they deduced, "she's obviously gone mad. Mad I tell you! Completely, utterly, and absolutely bat-s--t crazy! People will never go for it!" they proclaimed! "Otep can't sing about loving one's self! What is she? Some kind of troublemaker? She can't sing about individuality when it's society and the mainstream that dictate our every thought and whim. They tell us who to be, who to love, what we all must look like, who we should admire, what god to worship, they pick our friends, they scale our value! Free-thinking? Self-love? Dear God! It would be pandemonium. What she's singing about is nothing short of cultural blasphemy!"
Indeed it is. But so what? This song slid inside my mind during a very dark phase. In fact, when I think back to those days of doom and shadow I begin to feel the dreaded fear creeping over me. I won't tell you how close I came to doing who-knows-what back then because I am ashamed that I even considered surrender. I hate who I used to be, who they tried to make me. But no one is perfect, right? Right. To me, this is not a metal song or a rock song, it's a saga of personal victory under a mantra of "Life is more than what we are born into."
Perfectly Flawed appeared to me like an angel of mercy. Lying there, in the dust of all my insecurities, patching my wounds with little notes of excuses, my angel shimmered from the umbra and showered me with a halo of syllables disguised as tiny kisses. Slowly, the message assembled: I didn't need to be anyone but me. I didn't need to live up to anyone else's standards, expectations, or concept of beauty. I am I .... as the gods made me. Ever seeking, ever evolving, but still --- PERFECTLY FLAWED.
Selfishly, I needed to write this song for me. I needed to create something I felt was beautiful, to know that I was capable of it, but to also use this opportunity to do something good. To speak softly to all the bits of me that I see in all of you, so that no one ever feels alone, unwanted, devalued, or unnecessary. Perfectly Flawed is my attempt at celebrating the joy of taking charge of our destiny, and living life on our own terms... All Shapes and Sizes.
With few exceptions, radio refuses to play this song. They scoff, "OTEP? Oh no. We can't play that. They're too heavy." I am told that others have merely dismissed the song because they don't want to endorse whatever it is my band and I stand for. Others only want to promote "cock-rock" and won't support female fronted music -- especially some Los Angeles based band of lunatics fronted by a heretic political poet with a fondness and strange preoccupation with mysteriously pretty things and taboo wisdom. I know some of you continue to contact your local station asking them to play "Perfectly Flawed" even though it's a long-shot. But so be it, this is nothing new, obstacles have always been there and the odds have always been against us. Indeed, it might take a bit longer. But no one can stop the movement.
For those that don't understand why I wrote this song, I hope you can appreciate that this was song written out of necessity. Its message and motive are as authentic as it comes. Now, never you heathens fear, I will always create volatile art, but, to be clear, I will also always fight for what's right, even against the whole world, I will call to all things infinite to assist me in silencing the liars -- "there are no victims, only survivors".
Thanks to everyone who actually listens to the message and chooses to stand with us -- you know who you are.
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