Hey! Thanks for reading the newsletter. As of February 21, I am one year sober. It is the most consistent I’ve stayed with anything in a very long time. It is, without a doubt, the best thing I’ve done for my mental health. Here’s a personal essay about drinking and my emotional connection with Magnolia Electric Co. by Songs: Ohia after its 20th anniversary last week. It’s not a light or fun read but I did enjoy writing it and getting some thoughts about the record’s subject matter out there. Later today, I’m going to Soupfest in Columbus, OH to see Protomartyr and a bunch of my friends. That promises to be a lot more fun and I’ll write about it when I get back. Be well!
On the state seal of Indiana, dating back to 1816, there is an American bison jumping over a log and heading west as the sun rises over the hills in the east. The bison does not know what awaits it on the other side, its population dwindling down to 300 at its lowest in 1900, but it follows the light west regardless. That bison did not intend on dying in Indiana. In the early morning of January 5, 2016, about 4 AM or so, I loaded most of my belongings into my car in Indianapolis, IN, and drove west to Denver, CO. For 200 years, humans and wild animals have been trying to make it out of Indiana alive.
When I pulled out of the driveway, I fumbled around with my phone to press play on “Farewell Transmission” by Songs: Ohia as I drove out of the neighborhood where I lived for most of my life. Corny, yes. I knew what I was doing, but I had to say goodbye. I wasn’t really ready to leave. My family does not move. Most of my mom’s immediate family lived and died in the general vicinity of where they grew up in Toledo, OH. I still tell people that my move was prompted by an opportunity to avoid the real reason. I felt like I was going to die in Indianapolis. Not imminently, but I felt like it was around the corner at all times. It felt like a place where I’d wither on the vine. I felt like whatever I was looking for, I couldn’t find it in a place I’d lived for 24 years. I try to not draw too much attention to it because leaving in order to “find yourself” feels like a big expectation. What if I don’t find myself? What if, to paraphrase Jason Molina, I put a new address on the same old loneliness? What if I do find myself and I don’t like what I find?
When you listen to Songs: Ohia, you are not sure if someone had it worse than Jason Molina. There’s this hollow note in the vowels. It’s a steam whistle, either sounding at the end of a shift at the plant or from a locomotive as it leaves the station. It’s not the sound of someone who plans on being around forever. Jason Molina always had hope that the next place, the next day, could be better. Molina’s body would travel, but his sorrow remained at the center of his musical endeavors. He never truly moved on. Listening to this album, you’re in his shoes, not your own. On, “Almost Was Good Enough,” and, “Old Black Hen,” Molina’s lyrics reference a “tall black shadow” and the titular bird of the second song as embodiments of his depression. Hell, “Old Black Hen,” refers to the album you’re listening to as an “Old Black Record.” Depression is not a voice in the back of your head. It’s a doomsday sermon on every radio station. It is a cloud that looms over your world, it is groundwater seeping into the foundation of your life. Depression does not live in your brain. Depression has a farm in your mind with chickens on it. Its crops are always in season, reaping and sowing over and over in a spiral of self-sabotage and self-medication.
Jason Molina died in Indianapolis, not too far from where my mom works and has worked for the past three decades. I drove past his old apartment on most days when I’d meet her for lunch, since it was the quickest way to get to her place of work. We met for lunch almost daily because even though I was living at home for a few months before I moved to Denver, I needed an excuse to get out of the house. One day, a couple months before I moved, I took a different route to meet her for lunch for whatever reason. It was raining just enough to make the road a little bit slippery. An oncoming Jetta spun out and I t-boned him as he crossed into my lane. I remember listening to Wale on the radio (“Lotus Flower Bomb” [perish the thought that my last moments on earth would be spent listening to that song]), seeing the car spin 90º uphill and into my path, shifting out of fourth gear and into neutral, slamming on the brakes, and then breathing out smoke as the air bag deflated in front of me. I remember sliding over the handbrake and getting out of the passenger door, the driver’s side door was pinned shut. When I got out to see if the other people were uninjured, an occupant stepped out. We were the only people around. It was foggy and silent. It looked like purgatory, or at least like purgatory was depicted in movies. Full of adrenaline, my lungs gasping for more air, I said “HOLY SHIT ARE WE FUCKING ALIVE RIGHT NOW?”
Jason Molina lived a troubled existence, his lyrics often reflecting the battle waged in his head against existence itself. Addiction marred his final years and the news surrounding his death rarely felt like a memorial. Each news outlet printing the same sort of obituary with a heavy, knowing sigh. It’s a sigh that echoes throughout the Midwest. “Lord knows we tried, but we did not succeed.” You only make that noise about someone you love. You hear that sigh from someone else and you hope it isn’t about you. If someone tells you that they need to talk to you, and you hear that sigh, you know that it won’t be a pleasant conversation. So I want you to imagine that sigh right now. I never had a healthy relationship with alcohol. I struggled with drinking up until the point I quit in 2022. It wasn’t exactly hard for me to quit. I just did it. I stopped and didn’t look back. It was like moving out of Indiana. I was so scared about my future that I couldn’t afford to do anything but stop.
I didn’t realize my problem was so bad until I quit. It wasn’t about the amount. Without booze, I felt out of place in social situations. I didn’t know what to do if I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t know who I was without a drink in my hand. I didn’t think it was a problem because I hadn’t ruined my life yet. I didn’t realize that some people don’t ruin their life. Some people don’t die in a gutter. I drank and had an enriching, exciting life, but I was afraid of what I’d find without it. I didn’t even think I had a problem for years. I worked at a liquor store right when I got out of college. I remember a guy who’d come in and buy a bottle of the same CabSauv at 5:35 every afternoon. We had a routine: I scanned the dark red bottle, his eyes darted back and forth, and he would pay me in cash that was soaked in the sweat from his palms. I remember a woman who would buy two big handles of Tito’s Vodka during each Saturday shift. She always sounded like she was throwing a party but after three weekends, you could tell that she was the only person in attendance. “It’s handmade, so you can’t get a hangover,” she told me at the counter. You get imposter syndrome when you see professionals at work. I wasn’t drinking like them. Suffering in silence is a Midwestern rite of passage. The problem itself is nothing to be ashamed of, but you sure would hate to be a bother if it meant someone else had to help you out. In a place that portends to be polite like Indiana, intruding is the ultimate sin. Whatever you’re going through, someone has it worse and you should be thankful that you’re not them.
Country music and drinking go hand in hand, but this isn’t a record about drinking. It’s about being alone even when you’re in a crowd. It’s about having no one to depend on in this flat, waste of a space, and that includes yourself. When I listen to Magnolia Electric Co., I’m transported back to the six months I spent jobless in Indianapolis. It was, by far, the lowest point of my life. I was aimless until I found out I had a room waiting for me in Denver and as soon as I knew about that, I took my foot entirely off of the gas pedal, so to speak. I drank a lot. I did most of it at home, in my parents’ basement, listening to records. My unemployment money was split between moving costs and bar tabs. I drove home at 2 AM three times a week and the roads were occupied entirely by other people doing the same. The idea of a DUI never crossed my mind because someone else was probably driving worse than me. I’m only bringing this up because this is the same way that Magnolia Electric Co. sounds. It is a deeply tragic and lonesome record full of “I’ll be fine.” It is a record about how people shouldn’t focus on you because someone out there has it worse. It is about the sun rising in the east the next morning and remembering that tomorrow is a new day to try again. It is another opportunity to make it out. Molina references the, “Will-o’-the-wisp,” a ghostly light in the darkness of swamps, on the album. It’s the light that keeps your hope alive in the darkness of depression. Sometimes it’s portrayed as a false hope, but to the depressed man, it’s all false hope.
The will'-o’-the-wisp can also be portrayed as something an explorer follows for too long that makes them question their path. I’ve struggled with trying to do things the right way for most of my life. I am always wondering if anyone else has had to do things the way that I have to do them. I spent so much of my 20s searching hyperspecific terms in Google, on Reddit, on old forums to see if I was doing anything right. “How do I change main cabin filter volkswagen gti” “How to get rid of mice” “Should I know what I want to do at 24 years old” I was surrounded by people who had careers. People who owned homes. People who had children. I was surrounded by people who knew what they wanted and got it. My family never felt like they had to move away to find themselves. My parents have had the same careers for their entire lives. They found what they wanted early on, and even if it hadn’t worked out the way they planned, they were happy. What did I have outside of a drinking problem and a college degree I couldn’t use? Had anyone else lived the way I lived and gotten it right? I didn’t know if I deserved happiness without working for it. Could I even find happiness? Am I even alive right now? I wouldn’t know unless I left.
On Magnolia Electric Co., Jason Molina created a perfect depiction of suffering in the Midwest. He did for the Rust Belt what Steinbeck did for California. Magnolia Electric Co. is an album by one man who stays in the same place as other people come in and out of his life. It is an album about feeling like a burden to the people who try to help you. It is an album that is as tragic as it is pretty and it is begging you at each and every note to please focus on how pretty and delicate it sounds. It is a record that has painted gold over a gunshot wound. Please do not focus on how deep that sorrow goes. Please don’t focus on how deep the wound is. Please, please just focus on the surface level pleasantries. This record does not sound like heaven or hell, rather some sort of middle-American purgatory where people do the same things, over and over again, until they die. It sounds like the voice in the back of your head saying that nobody makes it out. It sounds like the voice in your head telling you to be simple, to make your life less complicated for the sake of others. It is an album where the last song dreams about being strong and stubborn enough to finally get the hell out of this pit, either depression or the Midwest, and telling the people you love to do the same thing.
“The real truth about it is that no one gets it right. The real truth about it is, we’re all supposed to try.”
On the morning that I left for Denver, I said farewell to my old life. Driving out of my neighborhood, I took a long and exaggerated route that took me past my friends’ old homes and over a wooden bridge, built when my neighborhood was built, maybe two years after I was born. I drove past my old bar. I drove past Jason’s final home in Indianapolis. I took a detour and drove past the site where I crashed. I stepped out of my car and with the wet gravel and the morning dew on the ground, it smelled a lot like the day I crashed my car. I took a deep breath. It wasn’t smoke. It was crisp, cold, early morning winter air. I could see rays of amber cutting through the blue and brown of the woods. The sun rose in the east. There was light ahead of me to the west. It was time to get out.
Listen Up, Nerds 17: Hold On Magnolia
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing this
Posted this on Twitter, and I'll say it again here: thanks for sharing. I'll be thinking about this essay for a long time - especially about depression having a farm in your mind. Your descriptions of this heartwrenching MEC record are spot-on and thoughtful. I always like to describe it as a record that out-Neils Neil Young himself, but you've gone so much further. Thanks. Thanks.