Paul and Not

The Big Thief songs that got me through young adulthood…

Paul 

I was eighteen in the deuxième arrondissement of Paris, sleeping on a pull out couch with my family friend from Ireland. The August moon shone through the balcony windows and cast eerie light over the thin blanket we were sharing. My gaze stayed fixated there while my friend rolled over to face me, her humid hair sticking to her cheek. 

I want to show you this song, she told me. It’s called Paul, by Big Thief. And then she played it, and I listened. The song starts out in the middle of a story

“The last time I saw Paul, I was horrible and almost let him in”

Adrienne Lenker’s voice croons and crackles over a muted guitar before the drums and base kick in. She sounds vaguely like a memory: close enough to feel, but far enough away that you can’t put your finger on the familiarity. My eyes never went off the blue moonlit balcony, but I was hooked all the way to the chorus. 

“I'll be your morning bright good night shadow machine… 

I'll be your record player baby if you know what I mean…”

I didn’t know what she meant, but I desperately wanted to. At eighteen, love and lust were interwoven into one concept, hard to discern where one started and the other stopped. I was coming to age in a culture of Lana Del Rey and Skins, and I was three weeks from leaving to go to college. I simultaneously felt that I had already experienced too much and I had barely been exposed to the world all all. 

“I'll be a real tough cookie with the whisky breath…

I'll be a killer and a thriller and the 'cause of our death.”

I had never heard such violent tenderness before. The lyrics were eons more sophisticated than the usual manic pixie dream girl, femme-fatale-esque croon fest - it was sultry, beautiful, corporeal. 

I romanticized the song immediately. I wanted to be Adrienne Lenker - tough and ethereal, always just slightly out of reach. For the past two years, I had woven in and out of a toxic relationship that left me with a fractured self image and a savior complex. All I wanted was for someone to see me as a “starry eyed lover” or a “hurricane rider.” I wanted to be unattainable and fierce, all while being desired.

Further, Adrienne Lenker did not pass off the blame of her failed relationship to chronic unattainability or femme fatality, but instead shouldered her failure of intimacy as a human trait. Most of all, her lyrics emphasize atonement. Coming to terms with hurting someone due to your own past, and understanding that no one can “kiss away [your] shit.” It’s a tragedy with a happy ending. 

On that Parisian balcony, I realized I was caught as both Paul and the singer - driving in circles and hoping for a different outcome whilst being unable to commit due to my own unresolved issues. This song helped me understand and contextual use that experience.

It’s been almost five years later, and I don’t listen to Paul much. Not because I don’t still love it, but because I don’t need it so much anymore.

Not 

I don’t remember where I first heard Not, but I can guess. I must’ve been in my last apartment in Providence, laying in my black oak bed. The window by my head looked out onto the main street of our college town, allowing the Spring sun to seep through into my bedroom. I remember how sunny it was those last few weeks of college. 

The song found me in a similar period of transition that Paul did. I was graduating college and facing a world of unknowns. I knew where I wanted to be, but had no idea how to end up there.

Everything felt uniquely pressing, and I was frustrated that I felt the same way as everyone else. I struggled with the versatility of uncertainty. College made you feel individually special, and then spat you out into a homogeneous monotony. You’re scared? Join the club. 

Not became my reprieve for the constant questions in my head.What do you want to do with your life? Will this matter in five years? Ten?Am I making the right choice? And, the most explored question for thousands of years: What is the meaning of life?

I didn’t know, but Big Thief did. Not not an answer to that question, but a rebuke.

“It's not the energy reeling

Nor the lines in your face

Nor the clouds on the ceiling

Nor the clouds in space”

Adrienne Lenker slowly picks apart various theories on the meaning of life, with such simple and yet visceral detail that it lends a moment of clarity.

“It's not the phone on the table

Nor the bed in the earth

Nor the bed in the stable

Nor your stable words…”

The lyrics oscillate from specific experiences to age old questions while the melody stays constant and predictable. Religion, technology, beauty, philosophy: nothing is safe from Adrienne Lenker’s analysis, and it all implies that there is no meaning of life. 

“Not the planet

Not spinning

Not a rouse

Not heat

Not the fire lapping up the creek

Not food

Not to eat…”

Strangely, I did not find the message hopeless. I found it comforting. It was nice to remember that no one had any of the answers, least of all me. 

It helped me understand that nothing was as urgent and important as I thought it was. Everything would fall into place as long as I didn’t put external meaning on every stage of my life. I didn’t have to accomplish anything or change the world or be judged by anyone else. I didn’t even have to find my own meaning to life. I could just enjoy it. 

The way Not ends is an homage to the lyrics. The harmonies become increasingly desperate, and Adrienne Lenker begins practically snarling her lyrics until she can barely get them out without her voice cracking:

“Not to die

Not dying

Not to laugh

Not lying

Not the vacant wilderness vying…”

The guitars begin fighting each other, playing over the entropy of lost melodies, dissonance, squeals - until it all quiets into one wavering note and screeches into silence. No one knows, the instruments are saying. The universe is a balance between chaos and order. Who are we to assign meaning to it?

Not leaves you on the cusp of an epiphany. I’m happy living without any of the answers.