Went looking for a creation myth, ended up with a pair of cracked lips
On Phoebe Bridgers and the Jesus leap
“His breakthrough was the aestheticization of weakness. Not in what conquers, not in glory, but in what’s fragile and what suffers—there lies sanity. And salvation. ‘Let anyone who has power renounce it,’ he said. ‘Your father is compassionate to all, as you should be.’ That’s how He talked, to those who knew Him.”
- John Jeremiah Sullivan, from his essay “Upon This Rock”
There is a particular anguish to loneliness of the spirit. I felt it every day in New York, when I rode an empty L train at 4:30am on the way home from my bar job, or in the crowd of a sold-out venue in Times Square as I looked around for my friends who didn’t make it to the show, or sitting on my rooftop in Ridgewood, staring out at the elevated line as the M as rolled into the Seneca Ave station, screeched to a halt, let the passengers off, and continued into Queens. It’s in the throat.
This specific brand of loneliness sears itself into the brain, as well. It comes with the feeling that I’m going to die this way, that I’ve climbed my way up to the top of this mountain and there’s no coming down, just me and my thoughts as I freeze to death here at the summit. Or maybe it’s a wide desert, or a prairie, nothing but sand or grass in any direction, no where to go but up. Maybe it’s an infinite ocean, a horizon line that’s impossibly far away. Either way, I’ve felt the loneliest in my life when I’ve done wrong, inflicted pain or inconvenience at someone’s else expense. When I crashed my car seven years ago, hydroplaned directly into the car in front of me as I slammed on the breaks, there was a lot of talk afterward about how it was no one’s fault. It wasn’t my fault, said my friends and family, because I slowed at an appropriate distance given the rain, and my brakes failed regardless. It wasn’t the fault of the woman whose car I crashed into, said those same loved ones, because the car in front of her stopped short as well, at a yellow light, the driver taking caution not to run a red light across train tracks, and the woman in front of me simply acted in interest of her own self-preservation. It just happened, at worst a mechanical failing or some oil slick on the road that surfaced during the rain storm. No one fucked up. Some things just happen that way: bad and for no reason. I ate spaghetti and homemade garlic bread that night, pushing clumps of tomatoes around my plate. I didn’t drive in the rain again for a month. I don’t remember the face or name of the woman who drove the car I crashed into. My insurance rate eventually became manageable. But I couldn’t shake the guilt. When I think about it this way, I understand why people turn to God.
In the Apple Music description for her song “Chinese Satellite,” Phoebe Bridgers writes: “I have no faith—and that’s what it’s about. My friend Harry put it in the best way ever once. He was like, ‘Man, sometimes I just wish I could make the Jesus leap.’ But I can’t do it.”
I love this, the imagery of faith as an insurmountable leap. It’s inevitable for people my age, Bridgers’ age, people who grew up into our broken world, which has only continued to show its widening stress fractures with each passing year, to fear putting our faith into anything at all. There’s an enormous cost to the gift of one’s faith. It’s a wide leap, wide enough to swallow you entirely if you’re not careful. If you have any hope of making it, you have to put the blinders on, ignore the distance below, and tell yourself that it’s not as far as it seems until you really, truly believe that it’s true. And even then, maybe you’ll brush the edge with your fingers as the stone crumbles against your palm, and slide to your doom. Maybe you won’t even make it that far.
Punisher is a consideration of that leap, an estimation of its distance. Bridgers is at her most earnest in “Chinese Satellite” as she sings “I want to believe / Instead I look at the sky and I feel nothing / You know I hate to be alone / I want to be wrong.” The image pairs with the album’s artwork, a textless photograph of Bridgers, dressed as a skeleton in the middle of a rocky dessert, looking up at a night sky filled with stars, an intense red light from an unseen source illuminating the singer from above. I want her to believe. I want to believe, too.
In an old song, “Funeral,” Bridgers addresses the man himself, lamenting her eternal sadness: “Jesus Christ, I’m so blue all the time / and that’s just how I feel, / always have and I always will.” It reads as half grievance, half prayer, like someone speaking in an empty room to no one, not acknowledging the possibility of a listening God, but not denying it either, if he has some help to offer. In the narrative of this song, Bridgers is booked to sing at the funeral “of a kid a year older than me.” Throughout, she dispels wide, mythological answers for her sadness. Don’t tell her about what her dreams mean, because she doesn’t believe in that stuff anymore. Don’t give her an answer for her sadness, or any type of explanation, because that’s just how she feels, always has, always will. The disposal of myth-making leads to a gut punch of the stakes in the final verse: “And last night, I blacked out in my car / and I woke up in my childhood bed, / wishing I was someone else, feeling sorry for myself, / when I remembered someone's kid is dead.” For the album artwork, someone has painted a ghost over a person in an old photo.
I don’t mean to be cynical most of the time. I want to believe that, in my weakest moments, my life still has meaning, that my sadness will eventually develop into something with deeply validating meaning. This year has reminded me of my car crash in the sense that, every day, something bad happens for no reason. The Jesus leap looks more and more appealing each day. The distance looks shorter than ever.
I still don’t think I can make it. But this week, around five each evening, I’ve spent some time at the beach. I get on when the lifeguards leave and the crowd filters out, a few good hours before sunset. The water is as warm as it’ll be this year, and the weather has agreed with me for the most part. For the first time this year, I’ve swam in the New Jersey ocean, that massive wonder at the end of my street, and as the waves rock me, as I float on its salty surface, I stare at the horizon, wonder how far out I’m really seeing, let the waves crash over my head, and smile.
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lovely writing and I'm happy to have found this after digging into the "creation myth" lryic on I Know the End. i share this sentiment about making the leap and the utter impossible feeling of that jump in spite of so much evidence of our failures and guilt over them--or because of them. You're concluding para was beautiful, thank you :)