a modern leper, in plain sight
In the biopic of me, the soundtrack would be full of Brandi Carlile, Janelle Monáe, and a band named Moonlight Bride who don’t exist any more. But the story’s inciting incident would likely have a Frightened Rabbit needle drop.
This version I’ve had on loop the last month is (at least by merit of association) gayer than the original which kicked off said long-ago origin story.
I definitely didn’t know at the time I was originating. At first listen I didn’t even like Frightened Rabbit’s particular, lilting ballad of sadness; in screenwriting terms it wasn’t a want, it was a need.
Dale gave me The Midnight Organ Fight as part of a thumbdrive album dump which would become the foundation of our friendship — we had a real Meet Cute, followed by said mixtape, which led us to road trip to a concert, which involved a car breakdown and storm of mythological proportions. A story and soundtrack for another day, full of then-named The Guggenheim Grotto.
Sooner or later Dale’s thumbdrive albums (save one; sorry The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn I respect you but from arms length) became some of my all timers.
The Midnight Organ Fight was the last to set as Personal Canon cement. I was conversant in both biblical literature and modern metaphor, but that’s not the same thing as ability to emotionally veer from abstraction to directness, or hold its intense gaze.
“The Modern Leper” in particular preyed on a terror of losing sight — far greater (and more certain in the linear narrative) than losing my leg and also (probably wrongly, however one adjudicates that), greater than my terror of death by suicide.
My first job post-university was PASTE magazine, which considered The Midnight Organ Fight god-tier untouchable. In my time there it dug deeper grooves into my ears, brain, and heart, along with several other ‘soundtrack albums’ which eventually take me to those six months of jumping in the deep end of an endless catalogue: Lissie, Jenny Owen Youngs, Josh Ritter, Frank Ocean, Lorde, Jenny Lewis.
In that time throwing myself into music and unraveling, I finally stared ‘The Modern Leper’ in the face.
I’d never heard the graphic imagery of inevitable, painful, passive, loss applied to the mental desperation of depression, but that specific biblical metaphor could never have been lost on me. The interchange of physical and psychic got more profound on each turn.
I love the specific and evocative choice of “walking through the only door” not open door, because there’s one entry, which serves as the sole escape route . . . and it stands closed.
Not always but sometimes, talking about death is the cure for desiring it. Definitionally, there’s no cure, but we can chase postponement, treat the symptoms.
I have a playlist which songs are of the siren’s lure of death by suicide; both the original and this cover are on it. Hearing that refrain is not something anyone needs be shy about, and I’ve written about its necessity in television and film. But this is one area music nearly always has the edge.
Though a few shows and films have succeeded (A Ghost Story, You’re the Worst, I May Destroy You), depicting suicidal ideation and depression in a predominantly-visual medium is more difficult than in music because the vast bulk of it is repetitive, internal, and boring. Putting off that ideation is even less glamorous, the scrape of chewed fingernails against crumbling flesh. Once it hinged on someone answering a phone call, a horribly arbitrary thing to hitch my physical form to, though somewhat more dramatisable on screen.
Sometimes the only thing which gets us through another day is talking about the art which keeps us alive another night. My playlist has sometimes felt like the last stop before I made another phone call, or didn’t; but almost all those times, perversely, songs about choosing death were enough to treat the symptoms of it.
you’re not ill, and I’m not dead
doesn’t that make us the perfect pair
In the veins of certain songs (notably ‘Hallelujah’; and love this essay on Audra McDonald’s perfect ‘Maybe This Time’); feeling a bit off when covered by people who haven’t experienced the full extent of heartbreak, betrayal, religious repression, etc., “The Modern Leper” is best sung by people who understand the desperate desire to cease existing.
Julien has talked openly about suicidal ideation, having “a disease I can’t shake” while still choosing life. In her performance and the layered, evolving production you can hear her understanding of the weight.
Every listen to this version is old friend and new message, the way the best covers manage. When it came out, I laid in bed and listened in that way we think is profound and would later be embarrassed to hear accurately called obsessive. Every time it repeats I am seen, and angry, and lost, and grateful, and sad, and nostalgic, and determined.
It reminds me despite countless experiences and a million miles, I’m essentially in the same place I first heard it. I’m still without a one who will walk through the only door. I’ve many more friends and far less faith. I know more and nothing at all. I’m not dead.
sit with me, we’ll start again
and you can tell me all about what you did today