ALL FOURS BY MIRANDA JULY

Not very demure, maybe a little mindful

There are so many great reviews of Miranda July’s novel and illuminating interviews with the author that I decided I might pay homage to her book in a different way: with a midlife crisis playlist—a book response in songs, if you will. 

My All Fours moment came in a rush two years ago, six months before I turned 45, accompanied by the most intense emotional instability that I have ever experienced. I like to refer to it as a cross between a shamanistic breaking open and schizophrenic breakdown, knowing it to be neither of those things, but having very few other references for the kind of overwhelming transformation that seemed to be inevitable. It had just become very clear that the old way of living was unsustainable and that there wasn’t a new road available that would be easy to take.

For weeks I felt as if I was low-level tripping all of the time. I felt ALIVE and also torn apart, constantly seeking and sensing the earth’s ability to lead me in the right direction, all the while crying at the bottom of staircases. I felt at home in the world in the way a wave might feel at home in the ocean which is to say maybe preciously, precariously, powerfully. I welcomed all this like my life depended on it but that didn’t make it easy to take. To cope I collected songs that resonated with the moment, and listened to them on repeat, sometimes one at a time for weeks. 

Some had a line or two that seemed to hit. Others had vocalists, mostly female identified but not all, that laid claim to a kind of grit I would come to see was necessary to my own survival. It wasn’t until I listened to them more closely, about a year later, that I realized how or why they had been speaking to me. A few have a very clear message: straight woman, you need a divorce pronto. Most more subtly spoke to some life inside me that was way bigger than the one I was living. Suddenly a part of me had arrived and not when the part of me that I had been working so hard on expected it. 

Some of the songs I listened to a thousand times, each as bittersweet as the last.

Frazey Ford: September Fields - Acoustic Hidden Track

Cue guitar and warbling female voice. Lyrics begin with the words:

You better get up for your mama.
You better grab the best of your life
I know you’re ready
To get over, anyhow. 

And continues on:

Do you find yourself feeling lonesome
Do you ache in your body in your mind.

Later she asks:

Do you say that what you have been given a whole lot of nothing for your time?
Will have you sinkin’
Down in your bones?
Do you toss and turn and turn at night?
Are you holding holding on so tight?

That’s it. It’s a short three-minute and thirty second heartbreaker with a tiny bit of choral resonance and no other fancy production of note. One friend I sent it to simply replied: "too soon.”

Adrianne Lenker: ingydar

I listened to this song for an entire weekend on repeat while I watched the sun set from a little garden apartment in Los Angeles. The sky turned amazing colors and the succulents went from friendly green giants to dark silhouettes. It was the first time I was without Olive for a consecutive number of nights and this brought not ecstasy, as I had imagined, but just a whole lot of grief. It’s the repetition at the end of this song and the beginning that makes it so satisfying to loop.

Most of these lyrics are over my paygrade but these phrases matched both the scenery and the mood.

Early evening, the pink ring swallows
The spherical marigold terrain
Sleepily Venus sinks and hollows
The stationed headlight of a plane

You are as far from me as memory
With fixtures fracture varyingly
The juice of dark cherries cover my skin
Six years in, no baby.

The last two lines might have been about a miscarriage but I didn’t hear them that way at the time.

First Aid Kit: My Silver Lining

The first verse is beautiful but it’s the second verse that I love for how it captures the disorientation of this particular mid-life moment:

I’ve woken up in a hotel room
My worries as big as the moon
Having no idea who are what or where I am
Something good comes with the bad
A songs never just sad
There’s hope, there’s a silver lining. 

The outro to the song is the exchange of two phrases:

Show me my silver lining (sung urgently) and
I gotta keep on keeping on (sung wearily).

Mallrat: Charlie

This is a simple song with a repetitive piano line and some youthful clapping. The vocalist rhymes the word water with hoarder by using a strong accent on them both and that just gets me every time I hear it. 

I also love the phrase that references the narrator’s mother and then turns around quickly to show that she’s always mothered herself.

She says that love is like a chess game and
Boys gotta do the chasing but when did I start taking her advice
I raised myself and that’s alright. 

The chorus says to the singer’s new love:

I hope your dreams are amazing, and that seems like the kindest, most heartfelt way to love someone these days. 

La Vita: Beverly Glenn-Copeland

This is a magical song that was recommended to me by the Instagram algorithm and I’m grateful for that. It begins with a haunting operatic line in Italian and a soaring cello line. Then another deeper voice is layers in with an anthemic urgent verse. The words are very clearly articulated, as if we are not meant to miss even one.

And I work and I work all day and night
And I wonder if I’m ever going to get it right
I push and I push to get ahead
I know I gotta make my daily bread
I know I don’t have time to lose
I wonder if I really have time to choose
I barely have time to shed a tear
I hardly have time to shake the fear

And the body says remember you gotta breath
The body says takes the time to grieve
The mind says let the silence go
The mind says allow yourself to grow
The spirit says cast your eyes above
The spirit says fill you heart with love
The heart says seek the light with
The heart says let the dance begin. 

The theme of a mother’s advice comes up in the chorus, with one line repeated:

My mother says to me enjoy your life. 

Sometimes I think of the recent explosion of women’s mid-life crisis narratives are all really about a privilege that women are now finally able to explore: to be able to reevaluate, to make new choices, to live differently than how we expected to live. What an actual gift this dance is. There is so much beauty in not even knowing how to enjoy your life that you can both heed that maternal advice and not heed it at the same time. The singer has a wonderfully rich personal story full of artistic perseverance and a recent album full of even more gems. 

Paris Paloma: the fruits

This one I love for the couplet:

I have no time for confession
For I’m too busy committing sins

And the weird choral part at the end that’s full of hushes and audible deep breaths.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Wolf

No playlist of mine would be complete without Karen O.

I’m lost and I’m lonely
I hunger for your only
Don’t leave me now, don’t break the spell
In heaven lost my taste for hell
Taste for HELL

Pretty much says it all. 

Great Lake Swimmers: Your Rocky Spine

The banjo solo in this song captures my heart. But the singer's whispery voice and the ethereal lyrics made good company for a long road trip back from that little studio apartment in Los Angeles.

Favorite lines:

And the mountains said I could find you here.
They whispered the snow and the leaves in my ear
I traced my finger along your trails
And your body was the map, I was lost in it.

Elephant Revival: Sing to the Mountain

Violin and Banjo are the perfect couple in my book and in this song they fit together beautifully. There are also a female and male vocal line in the verse that have a lovely harmony that’s both urgent and comforting. The violin solo at 2:30 minutes in is one of my favorites of all time. Think I’ll spend some time this winter learning to play it myself. #hobbies. 

Let the fires burn tonight, let the jugs of wine get drunk
Let the truth be known tonight, don’t go let yourself hide
Go and sing to the mountain, go and sing to the moon
Go and sing to just about everything,
‘cause everything is you

and finally Jackson C. Frank: Cover Me With Roses

…because, mortality.