Heretic Pride
When 91.1 FM in Nashville was WRVU, I would often take notes while driving and listening to it. I think I first heard The Smiths while tuning in. I also wrote the words, “I wanna breathe that fire again,” on a piece of paper, so I could look the band up later. I distinctly remember hearing Elvis Costello sing “New Amsterdam” on WRVU as a high school student and deciding, then and there, that I wanted to know everything there was to know about his work. Years later, I heard a woman in Northern Ireland accuse someone of speaking “double dutch,” and I felt sophisticated for knowing the phrase even though I was still unclear about what it meant.
Also on WRVU, I heard a song called, “Promising Actress,” which, I realized in no time at all, was something of a deep-dive, a righteous response even, to one of the greatest films ever made. The song helped me believe my own experience of the film, so…I poked around and found out it was written and performed by a gentleman named John Vanderslice. Upon finding an e-mail, I wrote him to thank him, and he wrote back. I still haven’t met him in person, but the positive response got me researching further, and I found out that he’d produced a band called The Mountain Goats (who looked interesting).
I have too much to say about The Mountain Goats for this one post, but I have a couple of quick thoughts. A recent piece about Eric Metaxas and his alleged audience (which sometimes overlaps at least a tiny bit with mine) has me realizing anew that William Blake’s refusal to make a firm distinction between religion and politics is as helpful (and groundbreaking) in our day as it was in his. He remains our contemporary in this revolutionary posture. Most of my favorite artists hover around or land somewhere near this insight, and here’s where The Mountain Goats make an awful lot of it. We sing it around our house. It’s called “Heretic Pride” (produced by the aforementioned Vanderslice alongside Scott Solter).
I love that the song gives voice to a witness without telling us how to feel about it. Is the character’s desire for a reckoning righteous or perverse? Who’s to say?!? We’re left to think the jihad through and perhaps apply it to our own, to do what we will with the energy of the testimony. It takes the edge off every which way. The song reminds me of Fanny Howe’s description of her own very faithful church attendance: “I like to be in an atmosphere where people examine one more completely insane vision of the universe.” I love those spaces too, which is why I have such affection for The Mountain Goats. Here’s me on their latest, Getting Into Knives.
Postscript: 91.1 is live and signalling again and maybe even better than it was. Which has me feeling very young. Listen.