Words on the Tracks: “The World at Large,” by Modest Mouse

The first in a series where I wax on about songs that have had a significant impact on my life. I promise they will not always be as long as this one.

One of the stranger things I’ve encountered so far in life is that sometimes other people say or otherwise emote things that describe either exactly or tangentially how you feel in a way you’re personally unable to articulate or closely replicate.

Could be in a conversation with a friend or someone completely random. (Happened to me once with my building’s maintenance guy, Leroy.) Might be written in a book or elsewhere, potentially said in a movie or TV show. Or, for the purposes of this essay, it can come in a song — which has been the most frequent way for me, I think, outside of stories and essays, maybe.

No matter how it happens, where you are or when, these occurrences have a tendency to have a profound effect on you. I think this is because, at the very least, they help you feel like you’re less alone, no matter what it is you’re experiencing or have experienced that has echoed into further moments, or what emotions come with it.

It’s a gift, to be honest, and I think that for most of us, it happens rarely, making it all the more impactful. For many, it may never even happen to at all. Even if there is someone somewhere out there who thinks and feels the same or at least startlingly similarly to the way you do, the chances aren’t always great that their words or other modes of expression will ever make their way serendipitously to you, or that you’ll find them even if you’re searching very hard for something like this that doesn’t approach the realm of a platitude — unless you really find yourself vibing with a platitude, then by all means, embrace it. Whatever blows your hair back, you know?

These privileged — albeit sometimes confounding, as they can cajole you into really getting uncomfortably introspective about your emotions and how you got to having particular ones — occasions should be cherished, and, you never know, they might really stick with you, have a way of influencing the rest of your entire life. And I’m not being melodramatic here. At least not intentionally so.

I believe I’ve been lucky to have had this sort of thing happen to me many times. It’s probably because I’m very easily impressionable by art and pop culture. And I’m constantly in conversation, even if I’m “alone” (thank something for the internet, phones and other digital ways of interacting with people when you can’t or don’t want to really be in the same room), and when I’m not, I’m likely consuming something that is, for better or worse, heavy on the feelings in some way, shape or form. My search is always for connection, even if it’s with people I do not and will never know.

But one specific instance really stands out to me.

I was driving north on Interstate 79, making the trek from the small rural town outside of Pittsburgh back to Erie, Pennsylvania, where i was mostly drinking and occasionally studying journalism and English.

I’d just gone abruptly and jarringly through the worst breakup of my life to that point (and this point, probably, depending on how you define this and what factors you consider) the previous Thursday night, and had retreated back home to get away and visit my family for a couple of days, hoping to achieve some modicum of comfort and to hopefully let the dust settle a little bit. (It would not. For years. But that is a story for another day.) I was pretty fuckin’ wrecked up and beaten down. My heart hurt, as my mom had so aptly put it.

As was my custom, I had my iPod playing through one of those contraptions where you attach it on a chord with a cassette tape at its end and it plays through the speakers. And it was on shuffle, selecting songs at random from the library I’d amassed of somewhere around 3,000 songs, most of which had been, I am ashamed to say, pirated. It wasn’t necessarily by design that I’d loaded up with so many songs. And it surely wasn’t about a finely educated or elevated taste, even if what I dug was pretty eclectic. I was 20 years old. I didn’t know 3,000-plus songs. But my older brother and I shared a computer and he was always listening to interesting things, hipper stuff than I was into or versed on. He spent a lot of time downloading tunes while, when I took over, it was all porn all the time. I probably still owe my parents at least hundreds in repairs for when my lil’ horn-dog self would snag Cum Fiesta clips from Kazaa that were accompanied by crippling Trojan Horse viruses.

(I once tried to cogently argue to him that Chris Carrabba was hands down — ha, nailed it — a more talented lyricist than Conor Oberst. I have, if you know me at all, completely changed my fucking tack on this one, as Oberst is likely my favorite lyricist, ever. While this opinion can be argued for and against until either side’s face turns blue, it is patently and egregiously untrue, as far as anything completely subjective can be. I’m sure someone out there has argued that whoever writes the lyrics for Chumbawumba is the GOAT, and you can’t really disprove something that is solely based upon opinion. It’s not wrong, even if it is.)

So I’d rip all his songs from the computer and throw them on the iPod that was, at the time, probably my most precious possession aside from the laptop I got when I graduated from high school and my parents purchased me a machine of my own that I would need for collegiate purposes, or, well, blogging for a Blogspot site I’d started called “The Calm During the Storm.” A terrible title, given that I was never, ever calm, no matter the weather. I suppose I was really trying to become who I pretended to be.

Because of this, I would often discover music that I would not likely have encountered otherwise. I could have gotten more out of the countless hours I drove or walked around listening to my iPod on shuffle if I had let it, you know, shuffle, but the truth is I had to really be in a certain mood to try out something new I had never heard before, even if I knew it would expand my horizons and enrich my life if I came across some really good shit. (This is how I would eventually discover The National the summer after I graduated from college and was commuting an hour both ways from my job at a local paper back to the apartment I was finishing up a lease on in State College, Pennsylvania. And that changed me forever, man. I love those melancholic dudes. But again, another story for another day.) Truth be told, I probably spent more time shuffling through offerings in an attempt to get to something I already was familiar with and enjoyed than I did actually listening to full songs. I still do this with the Spotify playlist I’ve been adding songs willy-nilly to since, i don’t know, 2012. Some habits you cannot shake.

But on this day, I did not skip a certain song when it came on.

And that made a huge difference.

I was probably in a daze, lost in my own thoughts as I made the straight shot up the fast lane at a clip that was unlawful and unadvisable, even though I was in no hurry at all to get back to where I’d been a few days prior. I’ve always been one to try and move as fast in a forward fashion and direction as possible. Please do not mistake this for moving on. That I am not so great at.

So when Modest Mouse’s “The World at Large” queued up and began playing, I let it ride without even realizing, I don’t think, that I was doing so. It was one of those several happy accidents that happen to be the result of some stupid dumb luck.

But I was startled out of it when some certain words of a verse kicked in (I’m nothing if not a lyrics guy), striking me in the psyche, but in a very good way. It was a strange sensation.

At exactly one minute and 20 seconds into the song, Isaac Brock sings:

“I pack up my belongings, and I head for the coast / It might not be a lot, but I feel like I’m makin’ the most.”

“Well, what’s all this then?” I thought, glancing quickly at my dashboard to see what band and song I was randomly listening to that had that line in it that reflected something I was about to do myself, sang with the same kind of optimistic resignation (counterintuitive as that descriptor may seem) to the notion that getting the hell out of Dodge and booking it for the ocean might be running away from your problems, albeit in the direction of something if not exactly good, at least better than what you were dealing with in your current situation. That is, of course, if I could sing. Which I cannot. You’ll just have to take my word on that. Probably a bit of a blessing, to be honest, because if I had any pipes at all I’d likely feel compelled to try to take all the emo shit I’m constantly penning and turn it into songs — and nobody needs that.

See, I’d been hell-bent on securing a summer internship with a newspaper so I could gain some legitimate experience outside the ramshackle, borderline ridiculous stuff my friends and comrades were assembling for our school’s weekly every Thursday night. (We essentially did what we wanted and put it together ourselves using some antiquated software called, I think, Quark.) I figured getting to work with a “real” paper people paid a meager sum to subscribe to, and assembling a diverse collection of clips would help me when I auditioned for The Daily Collegian, Penn State University Park’s (the “main campus”) rather esteemed student-run publication when I transferred there in the fall.

I’d had no such luck shooting for the moon (I couldn’t hold the jockstraps of the people who were landing spots at The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, etc.), as is often the case, and while I most certainly did not land among the stars, I did end up landing an offer for an unpaid internship at a paper called The Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland, about a 45-minute drive from Ocean City, Maryland, where I had spent most vacations in my youth, as well as my debaucherous and iconic Senior Trip after graduating high school. It was and is one of my favorite places in the world. (Admittedly, I have not seen very much of the world.)

Instead of going on Spring Break with my friends, during which it was later rumored, never proven and always denied, that the woman with whom I had just unceremoniously split the sheets had cheated on me with marginally known tattoo artist Ami James (soon as I got this intel, I went and got tested), my dad and I traveled to Salisbury so I could interview for the position. This is one of the first times in my life I can remember putting work and potential career goals in front of a fun time with people I love, which would become something of a motif for me, part of my brand, but occasionally it has paid dividends, even if it often results in regret.

While not at all the reason or catalyst for the sudden breakup, I had felt some hesitance about going and being away from my girlfriend for the entire summer, with the exception of a promised visit or two when I could get some time off from writing absolutely fuckin’ killer ledes, man. So while excited about the opportunity, I wasn’t too enthused about the prospect of the distance it would put between us.

However, in the span of just a couple of days, I had pivoted to very much looking forward to moving some of my shit into the small single dorm room the paper provided in partnership with Salisbury University, for a modest expense. I had wanted to actually live at the beach and commute to and from the office, but given the fact that I’d make zero dollars all summer made it financially inadvisable to try and rent a place in OCMD — and I could only even come close to affording one where I had to cohabitate with a bunch of strangers, many of whom were coming from Ireland, Poland or another place in Europe to work at various seafood buffets or boardwalk fry and ice cream outlets. Would’ve made for some good stories, but I wasn’t going down there to fuck around. At least not all the time.

I know I was all of 20 years old, but I really needed to get away for a while. And you bet I romanticized the shit out of that notion. Broken-hearted boy strikes out all on his own (with a stipend from his parents that kept him in Subway and the occasional weekend trip to a Chinese buffet or Golden Corral for the summer, and a bunch of handles of cheap scotch called Clan MacGregor that came in plastic bottles, supplied by my brother) to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional scribe. That type of thing is right down my alley. A real Bildungsroman, if you wanna get all writerly about it.

ANYWAY. I was surprised to find the song was a Modest Mouse joint. At this point, i had a very rudimentary knowledge of the band. I may have, and I am ashamed to say this, confused them with Franz Ferdinand on more than one occasion. My pal Bryan absolutely worshipped the ground they shredded upon, and I guess my brother must have dug them to an extent, which is how it ended up on the good ole iPod I had dubbed “Yossarian” (IYKYK). But to be honest all I knew was “Float On” because it had been played ceaselessly on the radio during a time when stations that shilled mostly pop were starting to pick up the more listener-friendly singles from bands that skewed, then, more indie. I don’t particularly know how or why this happened, probably had something to do with the windfall a group like The Killers set in motion for other bands, but I’m extremely glad it did. Because it hopefully led some of the masses, myself included, to deep cuts and a more robust appreciation of several groups. Not to say their “popular” songs were anything to sneeze at, though I did often look at them as their “lesser work.” (Still — how dope would it be to make a ton of money off your lesser work? Or any work at all?)

I paused the song and started it right back at the beginning, giving it an entire listen. And then another. And another. It brought me to tears and I almost had to pull off at a rest stop to get my shit together.

My guy Brock seemed like he was on the exact same page as me, though it was never specified really the type of shit he was going through. It was slightly vague, aside from the theme of restlessness throughout, and the willingness to make the often difficult decisions to change your scenery, be it physically or otherwise, in an attempt to improve things, even if doing so may seem misguided and occasionally even cowardly. And I think that’s part of the brilliance of the song, creating a narrative with a lack of specific detail that still somehow resonates deeply with so many. He made it so, through the broad lyrics, that you could apply your own meaning to it, like an a la carte collection of lines that can be applied to borderline infinite personal situations. I am, of course, not the only one who loves this song and has chosen what it means to them — how it fits into the mold of their life or a moment or phase within it that was lastingly impactful.

I don’t believe much in fate or anything similar, but it did feel like my discovery of this song at exactly, precisely, the right or most opportune time was almost too random to be truly and completely random. Maybe it was just happenstance, or luck (I guess I do believe in luck as a placeholder for anything divine or pre-planned by the universe or whatever). I don’t know. All I know is I’m supremely grateful I was taking that drive that day — that everything I’d done and every decision I’d made had somehow factored into my weeping pretty heavily to a Modest Mouse song during one tiny leg of my sojourn through existence.

What really ended up getting me about the song is, well, the ending. It has been said there are no perfect endings, but for my money, and for the somewhat ambiguous story Brock was telling, it seemed about as damn near perfect as you could possibly get. (Brock himself has admitted, without bashfulness or guilt or anything, something to the effect that he doesn’t particularly remember what or who he was writing a song about, or why he was doing so at a certain time, but that it was just what he had to get out when he did. I get that deeply.)

The final words of the song?

“I know that startin’ over’s not what life is about / But my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth / My thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth / My thoughts were so loud.”

Jesus Hermione Christ learning how to shave in a goatee without a mirror, that ending hits hard.

I listened to that song more times I can quantify for the remainder of that spring and the entire summer. And frequently since then. I always come back to it, and even more often when I’m especially in a mind space where I don’t just want to hear it, but desperately need to.

Somewhat regrettably, I have started over in so many ways, so many times, since then. And the song helps me feel alright about it. Aids me in making peace with my decisions, as ill-advised or discomforting or detrimental as they may be — or what they ultimately lead to. I don’t always want what I should want, or think I should want. What seems good on paper doesn’t always work out in my favor. I often find that something’s missing, and yet I am unable to find exactly what it is that’s missing. At least not yet. I acknowledge there’s a real possibility that I never will. Sometimes life goes that way. But I’ll keep moving forward, and starting over where and when I have to.