The Implicit Mormonism in Arcade Fire

 Enough interviews and on-line sources have casually mentioned that Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler was raised in a conservative Mormon household (and that as a mere biographical footnote), that I think I can safely assume it a fact, and not just another of those Steve-Martin-hometaught-Christina-Aguilera type urban legends.  Nevertheless, the point need not be belabored that Arcade Fire is very obviously not a Mormon band, neither sympathetic with nor openly antagonistic against the LDS Church, or even making passing mention to it. [They take neither the Brandon Flowers nor the Tyler Glenn approach.]  Now, Arcade Fire is a band clearly preoccupied with religion generally--their second LP is called Neon Bible after all--but whether or not Butler is merely non-practicing nowadays or straight-up ex-Mormon is largely irrelevant to enjoying the music of Arcade Fire.

However, to paraphrase Nabokov on Joyce, Butler may have left his religion but not its categories.  I hope I am not projecting myself too much here when I say that, to my conditioned ear, there are moments in Arcade Fire's lyrics when his childhood Mormonism peaks through--even if only to critique what he was once taught--yet still it's there, and I think an understanding of those distinctly LDS allusions may help to further flesh out one's appreciation for Arcade Fire's music.

Take for example their hands-down most iconic song, Wake Up:

In this anthem, which eulogizes the inevitable angst and heartbreak and euphoria that comes from growing up, the climactic line declares, "We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms/turning every good thing to rust!"  I can't help but hear in this line what is (to my knowledge) the very unique LDS belief that all human beings are children of God in the most literal sense, "and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him" (Romans 8:17)--that is, our eternal potential is to become Gods as well.  

I believe that Butler here is cleverly interrogating this belief by noting that if we are all "a million little gods"--in embryo, if nothing else--then our potential to create is matched only by our infantile ability to destroy all that is good around us (as God Himself says, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" -Genesis 3:22; emphasis added), with our human weakness invariably leaning towards the latter.  And as sad experience has shown, maybe he's right.

But the really meaty LDS allusions for me come in Neon Bible, particularly on my personal favorite track Antichrist Television Blues:

The song is a story about a self-declared "God-fearing man" who pushes his talented singer of a  daughter into show business (the working title was purportedly "Joe Simpson Blues").  The narrator spends most the song trying to convince himself that by doing so he's fulfilling God's plan ("I just gotta know if it's part of your plan/To seat my daughter there by your right hand"), all the while fearing he's not ("Lord, would you send me a sign/Cause I just gotta know if I'm wasting my time"), building up to the final line where he passionately pleads, "O tell me Lord, am I the antichrist."  Now, this song, like so much of Neon Bible, speaks to anxieties common to most religions; it's in the details, then, that his Mormon upbringing peeps out:

For example, the line "My lips are near but my heart is far away" is a direct allusions to Isaiah 29:13; in Mormonism, this is the scripture cited by Jesus Christ Himself to Joseph Smith, when He explains to the boy prophet why he is not to join any existing church.  Thus, in Mormonism, to say that "My lips are near but my heart is far away" is to make an abject confession of complete apostasy, to feel one's self terribly withdrawn from the presence of God.  It is a scripture that Butler would have been familiar with growing up, and he most likely understood its full passionate import when he used it here.

Likewise, "You'll always be a stranger in a strange, strange land" alludes to Hebrews 11:13, and is often cited in Mormonism to express our belief that we existed Pre-Mortally as spirits (another unique LDS belief), that we are in fact strangers and pilgrims upon this Earth; and "I'll be your mouthpiece" expresses the Mormon belief that the Prophet is the mouthpiece of God--but with this caveat, that in Mormonism, one cannot wish to be His mouthpiece, for God must choose a Prophet for Himself.  Therefore, to aspire to Prophethood, to presume to tell God who He should pick, is to sin in Mormonism.  Thus, the singer's fear of being the antichrist is derived in part from him seeking an honor that he is expressly forbidden to seek for himself.

The rest of Neon Bible likewise feels littered with small LDS moments: the full name of the LDS Church is of course The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which name expresses an expectation for the imminent Second Coming of Christ, an event of which even the angels know not "that day and hour" (Matthew 24:36)--or, as in the lyrics to Keep the Car Running, "they don't know where and they don't know when its coming/oh when, but its coming"; Intervention repeats Christ's warning from the Sermon on the Mount that once in prison you cannot pay even one farthing, for "I know no matter what you say/There are some debts you'll never pay"; that same song likewise interrogates the demands Church service can make on one's family (we have no professional clergy, with all ecclesiastical duties fulfilled solely by the lay membership--which, while making our religion more participatory, can also make brutal demands on the spare time of many of our members), as he sings of a soldier "Working for the Church while your life falls apart."

Furthermore, he critiques the LDS doctrines of Free Agency with Ocean of Noise's "Now who here among us/Still believes in choice/Not I", and of the necessity of the body and the spirits' union for a fullness of joy with My Body is a Cage "that keeps me from dancing/with the one I love"--and I don't think he would've engaged with these ideas if he hadn't been raised hearing all about them; My Body is a Cage also sings "I'm living in an age/That calls darkness light", another Isaiah reference oft used in Church talks and rhetoric (The Book of Mormon is crazy with Isaiah; Christ specifically says therein to "search the words of Isaiah").

The Well & The Lighthouse, with its line "Resurrected/Living in a lighthouse/If you leave the ships are gonna wreck...The lions and the lambs ain't sleeping yet" accomplishes the following: 1) it references belief in the resurrection; 2) expresses the anxiety of being responsible for another's salvation if you don't warn them (a common theme in Mormon missionary talks) by appropriating the lighthouse imagery from the hymn "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy"; and 3) frets that though we await it, the Millennial day has not yet arrived when "the lion and lamb shall lie down together" (yet another Isaiah allusion!).

Leaving the scriptures and focusing more on general LDS cultural mores, there is currently a blight of far too many American Mormons being seduced into Summer Sales, pyramid schemes, get-rich-quick scams, and a general, self-defeating desire for wealth (I've published about this phenomenon here).  I therefore can't help but hear Butler (quite justifiably) sing against such specific hypocrisies in lines like "It cares not for your pyramid schemes" (Black Mirror), "I don't want the salesmen knocking at my door" (Windowsill), and "never trust a millionaire quoting the sermon on the mount" (City With No Children from The Suburbs).

Their most recent album Reflektor also can't help but creep in some references to Butler's childhood faith; there is of course the "praying to the resurrector" (which "turns out it was just a reflector") on the album's title track.  And I hope I can be forgiven for hearing in "just a reflection of a reflection/of a reflection of a reflection/of a reflection" the sealing room (or marriage room) inside an LDS Temple, which always contain two mirrors opposite each other, reflecting back endlessly, representing eternity--you literally see yourself a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of a reflection therein.

And then there's the line "If this is heaven/I don't know what it’s for/If I can’t find you there/I don't care", which is a sentiment I actually once heard from a Bishop, who, in an unguarded moment one Sunday, as he spoke of his great love for his family, said if he made it to the highest heaven, the Celestial Kingdom, but the rest of his family didn't...then he didn't want to be there.  These are not ideas alien to LDS doctrine.

Then there's the dance number Here Comes the Night Time, which contains the line: "The missionaries tell us we will be left behind."  Granted, the "left behind" rhetoric is far more Evangelical than LDS, nevertheless "missionaries" generally are far more identified with the latter than the former.

But it's another, less obvious line from the same song that I would like to especially focus on: "If there's no music up in heaven/then what's it for?"

For if Butler really was raised in a conservative Mormon household, then he and I probably have the same experience: that of being made to feel vaguely guilty for loving music with non-Church-related content.  Not that the LDS Church is anti-music or anything--we have the incomparable Mormon Tabernacle Choir after all--but throughout much of our childhoods, American Mormon youth are  "encouraged" by our manifold Seminary and Sunday school teachers to "only listen to music" that is "uplifting" and "edifying" and that "doesn't offend the spirit," and other such lazy adjectives that are meant to guilt us into enjoying the insipid Saturday's Warrior soundtrack more than a Beatles or Queen album. 

(Oh yes, I remember many a Church youth dance where the chaperones wouldn't let us play our favorite song--"Intergalactic," say--not for any profane lyrics or themes mind you, but because it didn't fit in blandly enough with the approved playlist of Will Smith, late-90s boy bands, and YMCA!  Then they had the nerve to wonder why so few kids attended their dances.)

The typical criteria for "worthy music" was never whether or not a song resonated deeply and profoundly with your soul, or helped you heal in moments of passion and crisis, but only if it was "inoffensive"--which ironically is the most offensive music of all!  But if this music is good, and "every good gift comes from God" (a key line from the Book of Mormon), and we are to "lay hold of every good thing," then why resist what we feel is good?  Why make us doubt our own good feelings?  Does religious conversion happen any other way?  Does the Spirit speak in any other manner?  If this music isn't in heaven, then what's it for indeed?  I of course don't know why Win Butler drifted away from Mormonism, but I can make an educated guess as to at least one of the reasons why!  

For of course there will be music in heaven; that's what it's for.  I'm sorry he felt taught otherwise.

[Addition and Expansion added on 3/24/18, after a presentation at MHS/AML, wherein this post was presented as a paper entitled "'We're just a million little gods': The Gospel According to Arcade Fire"--an opportunity I was grateful for, not because it allowed me to include Everything Now, but because I think it finally provided me with a real conclusion of sorts]

The LDS references aren’t nearly as explicit on their most recent LP, last summer’s Everything Now—although the deep-cut “Put Your Money One Me” does contain suggestive lines such as “Trumpets of angels call for my head”, and “Sitting on the carpets of the basement of heaven/We were born innocent, but it didn’t last a day” (which could potentially reference the 2^nd Article of Faith, rejecting the doctrine of Original Sin while still acknowledging how little that actually helps us). Likewise, "Good God Damn"  hints at some hopeful, wrestling agnosticism.

As for the title-track and lead-single, which you have perhaps heard at a Barnes & Noble or Starbucks (because everything that was once independent and marginal is now gentrified and corporate...): The lyrics appear to indicate that “Everything Now” is an interrogation of how overwhelmed we all feel by our collective, immediate, and total access to all media at once in our hyper-digital age. Of course, that title can also be read as an exclamation for how overwhelmed we feel at everything happening in the world right now. I would like to suggest that there is a third potential reading of that title: that we are overwhelmed by Everything Now—that is, with the restoration of all things, we now have spread before us all principalities, a powers, thrones, kingdoms, worlds without numbers, from all eternity to all eternity—and that frankly frightens us. As Hugh Nibley once said, we have the feeling that it is all too good for us—because it really is all too good for us! How low, vain, and trifling have been our conversations, said Joseph Smith from Liberty Jail—but we have kept them low, vain and trifling because we prefer it that way.

But that limited vision is not how the Church came into being, nor is it why people join--though it may in fact be at least part of the reason why some people leave. To once more paraphrase Nabokov, Win Butler may have left his religion but not its categories--and the category that defines his music through all its many permutations, is his will-towards-transcendence. From "Wake Up" to "Windowsill" to "Mountains Beyond Mountains" to "Supersymmetry" and even "Infinite Content," this pull towards the transcendent has weaved its way through the collected works of Arcade Fire. Again, when he sings "I guess we'll just have to adjust"--that is, compromise, resign ourselves, settle into the thousand petty concerns of adulthood--he never actually finished articulating the word "adjust," because deep down, he doesn't feel like we should. There are greater and better things out there for us.

Why does any of this matter, anyways? Because with the plateauing of growth that has occurred in the Church lately, I would argue that part of the problem is that we have lost sight of precisely that which perhaps makes our religion most attractive: the promise of the infinite and eternal, which is something that in our summer sales and pyramid schemes we will scarcely face up to ourselves. We’re just a million little gods, but shrink away even from even being that. And when our own youth in turn aren't made to feel those the grandeur of those promises and possibilities, they will look elsewhere for it--or at least explore other modes for expressing a desire and/or frustration for it. Perhaps if the music of Arcade Fire does nothing else, it reminds us of what those who leave the faith are aching for—and, quite frankly, what we ourselves should be aching for as well.

On Neah Bay and The Shedd Aquarium

Neah Bay, WA: The northwestern-most point of the continental United States.  High School biology students are bussed in by permission of the Makah Tribal Council, to explore and catalog the teeming life of the tide pools.  These youth are instructed by their teachers to look, but not touch; admire, but not remove; examine, but not interfere.  With pens and paper in hand, the students crouch in close to peer at the staggering biodiversity contained within just one provisional pool of sea-water at low tide, let alone the whole incomprehensible ocean beside them.

The point in this field trip is to defamiliarize, to make the old new, the common uncommon, the mundane sublime, to show just how strange and wondrous and wild this world really is.  The hope, then, is that these students will grow up to get out of nature's way, to leave such overwhelming beauty alone, to recognize that we are but one small part of a much-larger-than-imaginable whole.

Once, in 1999, some of these students stood up, stood back, and staggered in awe, as they beheld, for the first time in 70 years, the Makah haul a slain whale to the beach.  The tribe had just barely received state permission to return to the old ways and hunt the gray whale as their ancestors did.

Many in Washington would heavily criticize the Makah, for contributing to the destruction of an endangered species; the Makahs for their part retorted that countless generations of their people hunted the whale without slimming the herds, that they had lived in careful balance with and awful respect for the Mother Nature that they rightly saw they were but one small part of.  The White Man alone, the pointed out, is who thought they could control the world so completely that they nearly destroyed it. 

Chicago, IL: The Shedd Aquarium, on the shores of Lake Michigan, in one of the largest cities in America.  Here the tide-pools have been meticulously reconstructed under artificial light, with fish carefully curated and shipped in to populate glass-and-plastic spheres for the gawking gaze of paying tourists.  Nature has been shrunk down to fit a Sunday afternoon.

There is a water show--in doors (naturally), with animal trainers leading dolphins and porpoises in choreographed crowd-pleasers set against music appropriately maudlin.  The opening movie montage sings the praises of this beautiful earth while we all sit in an air-conditioned building near the heart of downtown.  The non-diegetic voice-over assures the attendees that of all the wonders of this world, there is one species with greater potential than they all: You.  Me.  Humanity.  Cue the dolphins.

We had to leave the show early.

The organizers meant well of course, for the Shedd sought, like my High School biology teachers, to imbue within their patrons a deep and abiding respect for mother nature, and of man's need to take good care of her.  Nevertheless, the message here could not be clearer: this show is about mankind's absolute domination of nature, about how the best thing that could happen to Earth is for humanity to control her completely, for her own good, not leave her alone.

The irony, then, was that I visited the Shedd during one of the worst winters in recent Midwest history, as wild Polar Vortexes were hurled off the lower Arctic Circle and ravaged across Canada and the eastern United States.  Nature remains far more powerful than us humans--we really cannot control her, even for her "own good," though we can irritate her, damage her, radically disrupt her global weather patterns through our own self-destructive pollutions till she begins to wreck terrible vengeance upon us.  The Makah were right.

Neah Bay and the Shedd Aquarium: these are my two competing narratives for wildlife preservation.  One submits nature to us, the other us to nature; one shrinks her down, the other expands her out; one wants to control, the other get out of her way.  And the longer I live, the more I think that everything I felt was right as a youth turns out to still be right after all.

On Hannibal, MO and Stratford-upon-Avon

When I first visited Shakespeare's grave in Stratford-upon-Avon, what struck me most was how Shakespeare, "at the top of his game, still returned to Stratford-upon-Avon, that hickville one-horse-town of his youth he couldn't run away from fast enough. He voluntarily returned...Shakespeare had everything in London, fame, riches, popularity, prestige, and yet as he approached middle-age, he still chose to leave it all behind to return to podunk Stratford-upon-Avon."

I mused that "for all his profound and unsentimental understanding of nature and mankind and of all our joys and fears and sins and dreams, that he was still a man who was under the vulnerable sway of very human (even quintessential) desires.

"That is, in the end, William Shakespeare just wanted to go home.

"And he did."

I was deeply moved.

These thoughts were once again on my mind as I finally visited Hannibal, Missouri this week, to pay my respects to the birthplace of Samuel Clemens, AKA Mark Twain.  At least theoretically, Stratford and Hannibal have much in common: both are small rural river towns out in the sticks that have scarcely grown since their most renowned resident left, whose sole claim to fame is to have produced their respective nation's most famous writer, and have been trying to cash in on it ever since. They are both filled with monuments and museums and birth-homes and book-stores and gift shops and theaters and "authentic recreations" all tripping over each other.

And who can blame them?  Without Shakespeare and Twain tourism, both towns would continue to languish in obscurity.

Nevertheless, as I walked the Main Street of the "Historical District" of Hannibal, my feeling wasn't one of revelation or insight as in Stratford, but of something sadder...Maybe it was the hanging street signs squeaking sadly in the biting wind; Maybe it was the fact that the Midwest in later-winter is a big, brown, uniform slog with grey skies; maybe it's because to many, Missouri is best pronounced "Misery"; maybe it's because any cursory reading of Twain will tell you how much he despised all of the kitchy, tacky knick-knacks that cluttered up American households as much back then as they still do today, but now it's his face that's been reduced to the same sort of cheap tourist clap-trap, completely missing the point of his writings, and that in his own hometown no less!

But maybe, it's just knowing that Twain is not buried here, that he in fact elected to be buried up in New York state somewhere.  Remember that after leaving Hannibal, Twain never lived there again, that he became world famous, that he traveled the world extensively, that he saw far more of the Earth than even Shakespeare could have imagined. Now, Twain did come back to visit Hannibal late in his life, the museums all assured me of this, and they even confess that he was filled with a deep melancholy when he did.  And why wouldn't he?  This is exactly why people don't like to go to their high school reunions, because as nice as it is to take a trip down memory lane, there is something borderline tragic about seeing how little others have moved on with their lives after you did.

That is, for all his profound and unsentimental understanding of nature and mankind and of all our joys and fears and sins and dreams, Twain was still a man under the vulnerable sway of very human (even quintessential) desires.

But unlike Shakespeare, Twain sadly knew he could never go home again.

And he didn't.

Songs for Sunday Morning

There is a surprisingly robust sub-genre of songs that address the very specific malaise that can only be felt on a Sunday.  Maybe it's the recovery from Friday and Saturday night; maybe it's having to face the work week again; maybe as a day of new beginnings it makes one take a cold hard look at one's life; maybe as a religious Sabbath it makes one take a cold hard look at one's soul; maybe it's the fact that once again you are not in Church; maybe it's the fact that once again you are in Church; whatever the reason, Sunday is arguably the hardest morning to wake up to.

Granted, this malaise doesn't hit every Sunday, or even most Sundays; but Sunday is still the one day on which it's most likely to hit, and when it does hit, it always hits harder than on any other day of the week.  Simply put, if you're not careful, Sundays can be the worst.  As evidence, I proffer the following selected playlist:

Sunday Morning, by The Velvet Underground.  The first song of their first album, The Velvet Underground announced their arrival not with a bang of psychedelic experimentalism as their reputation suggests, but with a whimper of regretful melancholy, as can only come on a Sunday, singing, "I've got a feeling/I don't want to know..."

A Sunday, by Jimmy Eat World.  Clearly influenced by its Velvet Underground forebear right down to the gentle xylophone intro, Jimmy Eat World's "A Sunday" centers on the drive back after a Saturday night, when "the haze clears from your eyes," and you face the harsh light of a new week with a brutal, "what you wish for won't come true/live with that/with that..."

Sunday Morning Coming Down, by Johnny Cash.  The Man in Black offers the definitive cover of this old Kris Kristofferson song, about a hungover man who has a beer for breakfast and "one more for desert," and his Sunday morning only goes downhill from there. As he himself sings, "there's something in a Sunday/that makes somebody feel alone."

Sunday Sun, by Beck.  Break-ups are bad; they're even worst on a Sunday, as Beck knew full well on his break-up-album of break-up-albums, 2002's Seachange.  No other day of the week gets a break-up song from Beck, cause no other day needs one.

Sunday Morning, by No Doubt.  And as Gwen Stefani knew full well, if you need to turn the tables on a heart-breaker, there's no better/worst day to do it than on a Sunday.

Sunday Girl, by Blondie.  It's hard enough to deal with an ending relationship on a Sunday--but to have Sunday define the whole fling in the first place? That's just kicking a girl while she's down.  Somehow the French verse only adds to the ennui, despite (or because of?) the poppy melody. But then, there is a certain euphoria in melancholy, isn't there.

Sister Golden Hair, by America.  This love-lorn little number makes the list solely for that killer opening line: "Well I tried to make it Sunday/but I got so damned depressed..."  Haven't we all.

Interstate Love Song, by Stone Temple Pilots.  Man, a lot of these are break-up songs, aren't they!  This one at least moves us later into the day, with the opener: "Waiting/On a Sunday afternoon/For what I read between the lines/Your lies..."

Sunday Bloody Sunday, by U2.  But then, being brokenhearted is far from the worst thing that can happen on a Sunday: U2 had an early hit decrying the Bogside Massacre of 1972, wherein 26 unarmed protesters were shot by British troops in Northern Ireland, killing 13.  (And on a Sunday no less!  Here you thought your Sunday was bad.)  "How long must we sing this song" indeed.

Honorary Mention: Jesusland, by Ben Folds.  Now, Sunday is never explicitly named in this song; but c'mon, on what other day of the week is Ben Folds gonna have either the time or the inclination to "take a walk" all day through his native North Carolina, be filled with inexpressible melancholy at the "beautiful McMansions on a hill" and alienation from those "crosses flying high above the malls," and in sadness "hang your head and pray/for Jesus Land"?  There is only one answer.

So as to not leave you on a total bummer: God Only Knows, by the Beach Boys.  A favorite of no less than Sir Paul McCartney himself, this almost-hymn acknowledges the potential sadness present within every joy--indeed, how the former makes the latter possible.  Like on a Sunday.

Salt Lake I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

Last year, after I got my PhD acceptance letters in the mail and as I prepared to move cross country, I found myself often singing along to that old LCD Soundsystem standard, "New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down," only swapping out "New York" for "Salt Lake."  Nary another lyric change was necessary:
 

"Salt Lake I love you, but you're bringing me down," "Like a rat in a cage/pulling minimum wage" [hey-oh, Right-to-Work state!], "our records all show/you are filthy but fine" [the inversion!], "To the cops who got bored once they've run out of crime," "Salt Lake you're perfect, oh please don't change a thing," "Your mild millionaire [govenor's] now convinced he's a king" [Hunstman 2012!], "So the boring collect/I mean all disrespect," "but you're still the one [lake] where I'd happily drown" [but you can't, because no one can sink in the Great Salt Lake]...

Because I really do love that city, horrible air pollution and schizophrenic local politics and terrible drivers and all: it's stunningly situated among snow-capped mountains; the city is just large enough to be cosmopolitan but not so large as to be overcrowded; it's got dirt cheap cost of living while filled with million dollar views; you're never more than 20-minutes from some amazing hikes, or a day's drive from some world-class National Parks; it's calm (I once had a Jewish roommate from Chicago, and that's the adjective he always used to explain why he moved there, "it's so much more calm here man, it's calm!"); it's got an international hub airport, wide streets, a well-designed downtown, a major university and an award-winning public library; the summer heat is dry and the winter snow has no wind-chill; and when the sun sets over the Wasatch Front and reflects off the Great Salt Lake while you watch from the University parking lot...oh yes, you could do a lot worst than end up in Salt Lake City.

Nevertheless, after getting my MA from the University of Utah, I felt like I was just spinning my wheels there for awhile.  I was employed, yes, and that doing what I love most, teaching college (though never full time at any one place--hence the need for the PhD), and I had many adventures and made many friends and learned many new things and traveled a lot...but still I was just sort of plateaued out, not feeling like I was getting anywhere with my life.

Now, I was far from the only young single adult in SLC who felt that way--in fact, many spent far longer spinning their wheels there than I--in fact, that sense of solidarity with my peers is part of why I loved that city; but it's also part of why Salt Lake was bringing me down.  And when I think back on my (longer than expected) time in SLC, I remember its beauty and adventure as easily as I do the heartbreak and frustration, and I am grateful and regretful all at once.

So take me off your mailing list/To the kids who think it still exists/Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm right...And oh, maybe mother told you true/and there'll always be somebody there for you/and you'll never be alone/But maybe she's wrong, and maybe I'm right/and if so, here's this song...

Salt Lake I love you but you're bringing me down...

[Note: none of this applies of course to Rexburg or Iowa City, which I never loved.]

A Diagnosis

It was very important to her that he had asked her out first.  This was integral.

For of course he hadn't--in fact he hadn't needed to. Taking a risk, she had pulled up his number illegally from customer records and sent him a text inquiring as to whether John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were back together again.

His car had overheated on his way to Moab you see, and he really needed this car to move him to the Midwest for grad school next month; he had told her this explicitly, for she was the one working the Midas front desk that afternoon.  Hard experience had taught him that when his car was in the shop, it was usually for awhile, so he had brought a long book to read.
 
It was near the 4th of July, so he was at last tackling David McCullough's John Adams.  But the text didn't quite enrapture his attention, and so his gaze kept wandering up to her bright green eyes when he thought she wasn't looking.  She decided to take a chance and ask what was happening.

"Oh, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson just had a falling out," he replied, "It's really quite tragic.  I'm hoping they'll be besties again by the end."

"Oh, how sad!" she continued, "Let me know if they get back together!"  In this manner did they pass the afternoon, while the mechanic ran his diagnostics.

Wow she's really cute, he thought to myself, and if I didn't know any better, I'd mistake her polite customer service for actual flirting!

And besides, even if she was actually flirting with me, I'm moving in a month. 

Well, obviously he didn't know better, for she sent him the aforementioned text later that same afternoon. He responded that Adams and Jefferson were indeed back together in the end, and that it was very heart-warming. She then asked if he liked Thai or Pizza. By now, even he could pick up on loud signals like those, so he asked her if she would like to split some New York-style pizza come Wednesday. She said that would be lovely.

Later he excitedly told his roommates how this gorgeous girl at the autoshop had totally just asked him out, like something out of a fantasy or a dream, something too good to be true!  But she didn't remember it that way, no not at all--in fact, quite the inverse.  She repeatedly insisted to everyone who would listen that he had asked her out that afternoon.  "Smooth!" is what her friends all told him, which, while flattering, always just slightly confused him, since it was quite clearly the other way around: she had come on to him.

Now, he was grateful that she had come on to him, he loved her refreshing forwardness--and in the passionate weeks and months that followed, as they criss-crossed the country on meager stipends and salaries in a fevered long-distance relationship, meeting each others' families, he ordering her flowers from three states away and she spontaneously buying him clothing, both picking out each others' rings and making many plans for the not-so-distant future, they would often reflect on the serendipity that had his car breaking down during the one month she'd worked a second job at the very autoshop he came to, and how God, the heavens, angels and the fates had so foreordained their paths to cross at precisely that right moment, to lock eyes over John Adams--but still she had been the one to come on to him.

Nevertheless, to her, it was integral, all-important, essential even, that she remember it as him asking out her.

This should have been telling.

For the very things that pull us together are the very things that pull us apart.

She was at cross-purposes with herself, you see. She was raised in a conservative family in a conservative religion in a conservative part of the country and had attended a conservative college, all of which had imbued her with certain deep, inviolable convictions, viz: the man must make the first move, women must not be too forward, that her highest calling must be stay-at-home motherhood, to be grounded, domestic, stable, charitable, with a Biblical desire for her husband.

She often asked him how quickly he could finish his program, so they could settle down at last and have as many children as possible.  This idea that she could herself be forward, that she could desire and not just be desired, that she could be impulsive and wild and free, was a cognitive dissonance her own mind would not yet let her think, even as her wildness was manifest from their first encounter.

He should have paid closer attention.

For it was no rare moment of impulsiveness in some meek, submissive soul that caused her to break office-ethics and send him that text, but a deep and propulsive spirit that burst out of her more often than she realized. Tellingly, these moments of impulsiveness occurred when she was thinking least--that is, in impulsive moments her real self came out, not the carefully curated Good-Girl she had performed for so long that she assumed the role actually was her.

Ah yes, even in our post-modern, post-structural world that has complicated the very notion of identity beyond all useful definition, it is still possible for a human being to have a "real self" yearning to break free!

Her impulsiveness was, as most things, both a strength and a weakness, for she really was a charitable soul, earnest to do well by others, such that whenever she felt an impulse to do good, she didn't debate its merits or worry how it might be perceived, but simply did it; and hence many lonely were visited, hungry were fed, and mourning were comforted because of her impulsiveness.  

But let us here be clear: her goodness is not what made her impulsive, but the wild thing inside her.  Up till then in her life, she had been able to carefully, subconsciously channel her wildness for good, yes, but it was a wildness all the same--and what wildness wants, what wildness needs, more than anything and all social conditioning, is to feel free, no matter her goodness.

Hence, after some two years of working post-college at multiple and menial minimum-wage jobs, when she suddenly landed a coveted position as a flight-attendant, her wildness exerted itself.  He had been rooting for her of course (he knew how much she needed this break), and naturally assumed that this new job would be but a new wrinkle in their long-distance relationship: she would be but a time-zone ahead instead of a time-zone behind is all, and besides, she would be able to fly out to visit (and fly him out to visit!) much more often.

But here's what actually happened: the moment another outlet appeared for her wildness to be free, even one as simple and low-key as flight-attending, this same wildness overwhelmed her conservatism, her traditionalism, her reason, her rationality, her feelings, her love, her very goodness and decency, like a torrent tearing through a chink in a dam, finally ripping it apart in the onslaught.

She had always said, she had sincerely believed, that what she wanted was to be grounded, to settle down with husband and children; but instead she had found herself inexorably drawn to a career that would leave her as literally un-grounded as possible, in a plane in the sky, and thus her true wildness exerted itself. And a boyfriend, even one that her whole body desired, even one who yearned for freedom and wildness as much as her, yet was still stuck in grad school, simply could not contain the flood.

So, to the surprise of them both, she "mentally disengaged" (her words), and in open defiance to all of her upbringing and most cherished and conservative values, she turned from true love and flew out into the wild wide open.  She brazenly admitted to being "awful" to him when she announced she "wanted to take a break," that she was the one cruel and unfair and sudden, as though her honesty would save her.  But still--and this is the adjective she kept circling back to--she just had an overwhelming desire to feel "free!"  Her wildness had tasted freedom at last, and she would not be weaned from it so quickly, no matter how callous, how different from the person she thought she was, it made her.

He would reflect later that she was, after all, a woman conflicted, at odds with herself, who had never willingly admitted--much less owned--that she had had this wildness all along.  What she thinks she wants and what she actually wants remain opposed within her.  Perhaps if she had embraced it from the beginning, her wildness maybe never would have gotten the best of her, nor the best of each other.  But she had never let herself see this wildness in herself, much less master it, just as surely as she denied that she had asked out him.  She was never as conservative as she thought she was.  And so the wildness will continue to get the best of her.

The irony, of course, is that he had as deep a yearning for wildness and freedom as her--in fact, I dare say that that's why they were so immediately attracted, why they fell so passionately in love in the first place--for they were kindred spirits, as each saw in the other what each most desired in themselves.  They could have been free together.

But then, he had known about this wildness within him for years, in fact had spent most his 20s living with it, indulging in it, running free with it, reconciling it, moving with it like an old friend, making the best of his wildness instead of it making the best of him.  But she still had not.  What pulled them together pulled them apart.  She still has much growing up to do.  Physically they were only a couple years separated, but in their souls they were still ages apart.

Perhaps it's for the best, his friends consoled him, that this eruption happened now, and not, say, after they were married and actually had settled down, with all those children she claimed she craved crawling about (which would have grounded her beyond all), only for her wildness, too long suppressed and deferred, to finally erupt more violent than ever, like some long-dormant-volcano, tearing apart their marriage, destroying their family, and sending her spiraling out of control.  Dodged a bullet that one, they said, and he was increasingly inclined to agree.  Nevertheless, in his unguarded moments, he still caught himself wondering about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

This Is The Proper Sequence Of Music To Listen To By Which To Process a Break-Up

"Tis brief, my lord."

"As woman's love."

-Hamlet, Act III.ii 

1. Elliott Smith's Either/Or, followed immediately by X/O. 
2. Sea Change by Beck.
3. Grace by Jeff Buckley.
4. In Utero by Nirvana works surprisingly well in this context, believe it or not.
5. Mad Love by Robi Draco Rosa (though start with track 2).
6. "Hey Ya!" by Outkast, which was a break-up masquerading as a party song all along.
7. The Best of Leonard Cohen.
8. The Smiths.  Just, all of it.
9. Quiet Is The New Loud by Kings of Convenience.
10. The Curtain Hits The Cast and/or Trust by Low.   
11. The Velvet Underground by The Velvet Underground.
12. All the gut-wrenching break-up songs on Help! ("You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Ticket to Ride," "Yesterday"), Beatles for Sale ("No Reply," "I'm a Loser," "Baby's in Black," "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party"), Rubber Soul ("You Won't See Me," "What Goes On," "Girl," "I'm Looking Through You"), and/or Revolver ("Eleanor Rigby," "For No One") by The Beatles. 
13. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner by Ben Folds Five. 
14. Ben Fold's Rockin' the Suburbs, but skipping the last song and transitioning directly into Songs for Silverman.
15. Seven Swans and The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens (skip Illinois for now, it will not help you here). 
16. Noble Beast by Andrew Bird.
17. Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan (though start with "Visions of Johanna" and skip "I Want You").
18. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by Simon & Garfunkle (particularly "The Dangling Conversation"). 
19. Side B of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.
20. Side B of Pinkerton by Weezer. 
21. "Stardust" by Nat King Cole. 
22. "Stardust" by Willie Nelson.
23. "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye.
24. "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
25. "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor (obviously).
26. "I Will Survive" by Cake (obviously).
27. "The Distance" by Cake.  (Actually, the whole of Fashion Nugget works well here).
28. "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again" by Joy Division.
29. "Blue Monday" by New Order.
30. "Selfless, Cold and Composed" by Ben Folds Five. 
31. "Who Loves the Sun" by The Velvet Underground. 
32.  "Boys Don't Cry" by The Cure.
33. "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis Presley.
34. "Sorrow" by David Bowie.
35. "So Much For The Afterglow" and "Santa Monica" by Everclear. 
36. "Sugar We're Going Down" by Fall Out Boy.
37. "Paper Sun" by Traffic.
38. "Effect and Cause" by The White Stripes. 
39. "It's All Over Now" by The Rolling Stones.
40. "Dizzy" by Jimmy Eat World.
41. You are now officially tired of feeling sad, so you put on "99 Problems" by Jay-Z.  Extra points if you rap along with the lyrics at top volume.