Ohio, Wednesday, and False Senses of Security

This album and the band that created it are unbelievably good. I have had “Rat Saw God” on CD for a long time, and I usually play it when people come over. It’s always been good; I’ve known that for a while. Somehow, though, this week, this album reached even further into my soul and squeezed it until there was nothing left except the sound of a pedal steel. Karly Hartzman’s screaming in “Bull Believer” has actually made me cry on multiple occasions. One of my favorite lines in the whole album is on Formula One,

“Halloween decides to beat me into a pulp
Till I try to just play dead”

Halloween often feels something like that to me as well. However, the song that really has me in a chokehold is “Bath County.” Something about it reminds me so much of home. The description of this small sort of desolate southern/Appalachian town is a description I could have given of my hometown. Athens, Ohio is obviously not southern and it is not Bath County, Virginia; still though, the mirrored or parallel reality of my own home through the eyes of artists I love is so moving. Wednesday is from Asheville, NC. I would consider these two places pretty similar culturally; they are both Appalachian towns filled with colleges, young people, and hippies. A lot of music and art from Asheville finds it way up to Athens and a lot of people from Athens find their way down to Asheville. Sometimes its the other way around.

I wondered why I found this art that reminds me of home so moving at this particular moment, especially considering I had already loved the album for so long. I just came back to school after being home for a whole month. I didn’t realize how much I would miss it there. Still, the comfort I feel being there taunts a future stagnancy I am terrified of. And its less the stagnancy that is actually scary, its the potential illusion of being grounded, living a life that I do not know isn’t fulfilling.

So, in conclusion, listening to the band Wednesday (beautiful, fantastic artists they are) reminds me of home, which reminds me how much I miss it, which then reminds me how scared I am of missing it, etc. Or maybe I just really like the music. Perhaps it’s all of the above. Who knows.