We’ve made it really easy to not feel things. It’s become increasingly easier for us to numb out when things get rough, mostly because we have everything at our fingertips to distract us – Netflix, social media, gaming. Believe me, I love me some numbing out. I don’t like to feel big feelings – who does?
About a year and a half ago, I decided I needed to go back to therapy. It was a consequence of ignoring big feelings for too long. The thing is, you can ignore them, but you’re just delaying the inevitable. They’re going to bubble up again. So I spent about a year working through those big feelings and felt like a weight was lifted off my chest. I was able to handle situations much more rationally because that weight wasn’t there anymore.
It did take a lot of mining though. That’s a pun, and you’ll understand how in a second.
Day 8: The Gold – Manchester Orchestra
The “setting” of this song is a mining town in Minnesota at the turn of the 20th Century. The song is littered with double entendres of a miner’s work and how he suppresses his feelings – to the point of his wife saying she doesn’t love him anymore.
Couldn’t really love you anymore
You’ve become my ceiling
I don’t think I love you anymore
That gold mine changed you
The tension has built to a point where the wife can’t keep it in anymore, even though she notes something that her dad used to tell her:
You don’t open your eyes for awhile
You just breathe that moment down
This is almost verbatim what the father of the frontman of the band told him when he was younger – this is how he reacts to sudden, tragic news. You have to shut it out for awhile or else it will take you over. And then comes my favorite part, the chorus:
I believed you were crazy
You believe you love me
You and me, we’re a daydream
So lose your faith and leave me
So here’s the sitch. Their relationship is falling apart because the husband is becoming greedy and a workaholic, and now he’s getting sick after spending all that time in the mine.
I don’t wanna bark here anymore
The black hills, the colly
Wasn’t really dangerous for us
We’d just catch you coughing
What the hell are we gonna do?
A black mile to the surface
I don’t wanna be here anymore
It all tastes like poison
Their relationship, like the miners, is “a black mile to the surface” (uncoincidentally the title of the album this song is from.) You can sense from the sparse melody of this song that things are cascading, falling apart, and they’re still underground. The man let his work get the better of him. The woman let the tension bubble below the surface for too long. And now they may just lose everything.
Day 9: Bad Self Portraits – Lake Street Dive
I like taking selfies. I won’t even try to deny that fact. Call it vanity, call it showing off. We’re a selfie culture. And it’s fun to be all cute and take a cute picture.
It’s even better if it’s for revenge.
Let me unpack that. When you’re with someone, you take selfies with them and post them on Instagram. You want to show the world that you two are a couple. To make people talk (“OMG she has a boyfraaaand”) and to make certain people jealous. Y’know, like exes. Don’t pretend it’s not a thing, because it is.
But other times it’s because you’re trying to boost your self-esteem. You had so much hope for a future with someone and they let you down. So now, you’re going to take some bad self portraits.
I love the breezy, jazzy, groovy sound of Lake Street Dive, and I love frontwoman Bridget Kearney’s voice. In this song, she’s tapping into that selfie culture we’re all familiar with, but after a breakup, she finds herself with no one to take pictures with.
I bought this camera
To take pictures of my love
Now that he’s gone
I don’t have anybody to take pictures of
We’ve all been there. That walk of shame to delete all the pictures of your ex from your camera roll and your Instagram. First world problems, amirite? But what’s worse is…what are you going to take pictures of now? How about some empowering selfies? Yeah, that’ll stick it to ’em.
I’m taking landscapes
I’m taking still lifes
I’m taking bad self portraits
Of a lonely woman
Granted, a breakup is a great time to up your Insta game. But it also feels like a sham. I remember after a turbulent breakup I wanted to put on a front like I was doing just fine. I was doing the exact opposite of fine, and everyone who knew me knew it. (I may have also used this lyric as a caption…guilty as charged, yo.)
During this reflection, Kearney realizes something – she was in such hot pursuit of love, either this specific person or the idea of it, that she lost herself. That’s very true, especially for women. We’re told early on to find a good husband and not much else.
I’ve spent my life
So lost on lovin’
I could’ve been a painter or a president
But after 25 years
I should be good at something
Gone are the days of being so reticent
In a sense, it’s a wakeup call. It’s time to become good at something. And guess what she has? A camera.
I’m taking night classes
I’m making sculptures
I’m painting bad self portraits
Of a lonely woman
Who doesn’t love taking up a weird hobby after a breakup? It’s a great time to distract yourself and try something new, but again, it’s usually a sham, to try to pretend you’re doing better than the other person. Not always the case.
This is a breakup stage we’re all familiar with. A kind of, “Now what?” It happens to everyone. It may take a few bad self portraits, but we usually end up pretty okay.
Audrey D. DeBoer 