1 ENGL 106 Student, Fall 2012, Instructor Lisa Curtin Modest Mouse: A Masterpiece for the Musical Mind

I don't know me, and you don't know you, so we fit so good together 'cause I knew you like I knew myself. We clung on like barnacles on a boat; even though the ship sinks, you know you can't let go. Lyrics such as these are the things that made me who I am today. As I grew up through times of adversity, I looked not to drugs or addictions, nor to my family, nor anything of the sort for comfort and release. I found the greatest release in music. Harmonies, smooth rhythms and melodies, calm, slow bass drum, the contrasting twang of an indie guitar riff; these were the things that brought me peace in times of mental war. Even though times are no longer as tough as they were when bands like The Shins, Modest Mouse, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Dinosaur Jr., Fleet Foxes, and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin most resonated with me, the lyrics still have an effect on my mind to this day. Often I return to the same songs I always used to love, and I hear a line that heavily influenced me. I get sent back to a multitude of times years ago: 2008, when my grandfather died; 2004, at the height of my stepfathers alcoholism; 2008, at the end of his relapses; 2001, when I first realized I would never be seeing my father again. The music acts as a personal flashback, placing my mind right back into the thick of the tough times, as if each song were a bookmark in the story of my life. It's such a strange, confusing feeling knowing that something is wrong insidesomething is bothering me, yet I can't pinpoint it. On second thought, strange and confusing doesn't exactly cover how it feels. A certain depressing fear exists that many people are privileged to have never experienced. If you have ever reached a point at which you mentally sense that your subconscious is actively battling your conscious mind; if you feel that part of your brain is hiding things from the only part of your brain that you are allowed to access; if you feel that the mind you are forced to use is not the same mind that your body is choosing to use; if you feel so lost in yourself and in your thoughts that you can barely

2 function, then you know the exact fear I refer to when I describe the scared depression I was stuck in for three of the roughest years of my life. Peculiar? Strange? Yeah it did feel strange. It was confusing not being able to figure myself out. Emotionally, I was beside myself. I felt so apathetic and complacent that I almost felt no reason to wonder why. It was so clear though. From mid-eighth grade until the end of my sophomore year in high school, I intermittently experienced waves of moderate depression, followed by a wave of personal discovery, hope, understanding, and mental growth. There were a lot of factors that contributed to the depression: I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old at the time and I still had yet to hear from or meet my father. My stepfather was doing a horrible job at being a replacement; he was a nuisance of an alcoholic, and often kept me and my sister up late at night to lecture about cleaning up dog poop. The only grandfather I ever knew passed away. There was never just one problem on my mind. Yet throughout all this, I had one tried-and-true method to set aside everything in my head and relax. I stuck to my music religiously, at all hours of the day. I woke up to Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, and fell asleep to Modest Mouse day in and day out. That's when the music really stepped in. I would hear some lyrics, and they would just suddenly open a window to something I never even realized could help me. A new train of thought. On an even more basic level than that, the music served to slowly get my mind off of whatever had upset me. Rather than concentrating on something that angered me, I would let the music guide my mind far away to my sanctuary. It brought me an inch closer to controlling my own mind, rather than being forced into a closed, binary pattern of thinking caused by the depression. Each song inspired me to take another chip out of the thick stone walls that caged my mind. Late one night, I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling. I zoned the dark, wooden blades of my ceiling fan out of focus in an effort to relax my mind. As if by second nature, I reached over to my desk and groped for my iPod, all the while maintaining my unfocused stare at the gray of my ceiling. Within

3 seconds of placing the ear buds into my ears, I began to slip away into the slow, relaxing guitar riffs and bass drum hits of Novocain Stain. It never took long to find a good Modest Mouse song to listen to. I had been silently struggling all day long at school to find the right words to describe what was bothering me; if I could at least create an analogy or metaphor to explain what was going through my head, maybe I could share my thoughts with someone else. Maybe then someone could give me advice, or help me set my mind at ease. Most of my friends at school would notice I wasn't quite myself and they would ask what the matter was, but try as I may, I wouldn't be able to come up with any kind of answer. I suffered, endlessly thinking all day long, to no avail. Suddenly, the song I was listening to as I lay silent and motionless on my bed subtly sang to me the metaphor I had been searching for: Interchanges, plazas, and malls, and crowded chain restaurants. More housing developments go up, named after the things they replace. So welcome to Minnow Brook, and welcome to Shady Space. And it all seems a little abrupt. No, I don't like this change of pace. That was exactly it! It was freshman year, and I had just moved on from the simplicity of eighth grade to the complicated realm of high school. Every aspect of my life was advancing rapidly; the housing developments were the things like Biology class and Algebra II. They were the new, ugly things that had replaced things like study hall and music class: the pseudo-classes I always used to love in middle school. On top of that, I was dealing with the death of my grandfather. It was the first time in my life I had seen someone I loved in a casket. I hated the change of pace: the metaphorical acceleration from the slow, easy, nave life I had in middle school to the faster moving, real world I began to meet as I grew up during freshman year. In retrospect, it was undeniably one of the hardest things for me to handle at that time. It always seemed to me that if I listened attentively to the lyrics of my favorite indie band, Modest Mouse, I would find a brand new, unique perspective to a problem in my life. The lyrics spoke

4 to meas if in a coded language only I could understandin ways far beyond what could be understood by the words' literal value. Even though most people only listened to their best known song, Float On, I enjoyed every song on every album Modest Mouse had ever made, including their side project, Ugly Casanova. It seemed to me that the diction and syntax of every stanza, verse, or phrase had been specially crafted for my ears only, and always offered a thought-provoking insight to a tough situation in my life. With that being said, Modest Mouse was not the only indie band whose lyrics shaped my mind. All throughout high school I dealt with seeing my older friends off to college and not being able to hang out with them anymore. At the end of my junior year, my closest friend at the time was a senior named Joe. He was already enlisted in the Navy, and scheduled for basic training two months after graduation. I had already foreseen his graduation/leaving party being a depressing event; he was my best friend after all, and I knew I wouldn't be seeing him for months. Then after he would return, I knew it wouldn't be long before he was deployed. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't in tears over it. It just sucked that I would have to start hanging out with someone else after becoming such great friends with Joe. As always, I used the music of my favorite bands to relax, to slip away, and to think about my life's situation. This time I put on Pink Bullets by The Shins. I always enjoyed the high-alto indie slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs, and the generally indie sound that The Shins were known for. As if that was not enough to satisfy me, this particular song also had so many lines I loved. The line The years have been short, but the days were long... meant a lot to me (and I feel like this one is general enough to relate with anyone) because it perfectly captured my view on time. The days in school, and the time I spent with my friends felt like it would last quite a while at times, but looking back, it all happened in a flash. Then later in the song, James Mercer sings, When our kite lines first crossed, we tied them into knots. To finally fly apart, we had to cut them off. Since then, it's been a book you read

5 in reverse, so you understand less as the pages turn, The metaphor in this verse immediately made so much sense to me because I had my friendship with Joe in mind. When we first became friends, we were inseparable. We hung out constantly. Then when it came time for him to leave for basic and later be deployed to Okinawa, Japan, our metaphorical kite lines had to be cut apart. Our kites were no longer flown together. It was through these lyrics that I understood, and came to terms with the changes life moves through. In retrospect, I suppose it was never the lyrics that literally taught me anything after all. They never sat me down and explained life philosophy to me. It was just the way that each lineor at least the ones that meant something to meopened my mind to see things for my own. Its not just the words that do something for the listeners mind. Its the connections made, the self-realization, the inner understanding. These are the things that wisdom is made of, not the lyrics. Sure, the words may inspire wisdoms creation, but its never the phrases themselves that do anything more than cause the mind to think. The same can be said about all potentially inspiring media. Television, speeches, movies; they all follow the same rules. Maybe I was wrong all along. In a way, it doesnt make sense to fully credit the lyrics for what they have done to my mind. My mind has made itself into what it currently is. Yes, the lyrics were helpful. They enabled my mind to grow, but my mind grew and expanded on its own; the lyrics were only a small contributor to what shaped my mind. In a way, all those inspiring, philosophical lyrics were nothing more than a few modest little mice.