The Personal as Punisher

Like many others, I really began to fall in love with Phoebe Bridgers’ music after the release of Punisher, her second album, in June of 2020. Often filled with melancholic tones, nostalgia, or dark hilarity, her music is infused with the specificity of deep personal excavation; in her own words, “The weirdest thing in the specificity is that it sounds like poetry a lot of the time.” She’s clearly unafraid to face her inner demons, and her casual relationship with her complex emotions has helped me to better sit with mine, especially nearing the one year anniversary of the pandemic.

According to NPR, Punisher’s themes largely consist of missed connections, the tension between the inner and outer self, and the lonely ache of watching things end. There isn’t a better way to sum up the intricate, gnawing emotions of living through this pandemic; a world event no one asked for and an “unprecedented time” no one wished to be thrust into.

In listening to the album, the invisible connection cutting through the lyrics is the concept of want, of wanting: to be something, to do something for someone else, for another to do for you, to be in a different place, to move past a personal barrier. The literal use of the word “want” connotes immediate desire but also longing: Phoebe often doesn’t know exactly what she wants, but there is a recognized need, an undefined pull towards something she can’t quite place. There is a reference to wanting in almost every song, placing each in a context of yearning, need, the absence of something or someone.

Often in my college life I’ve been in a position of wanting, most of all during this past year. I wanted (and still want) connection, vulnerability, immunity, beauty, the absence of pain, to go back and change something I regret. I want to be close to people, to be closer to the person I want to be. There is no shortage of want in my life, or anyone’s lives, or in Punisher. There are so many wanting lyrics that I love, but in the spirit of personal specificity (always fun!) I want to take a look at the ones I feel close to after this year.

“Kyoto” is a song that hits a little harder for me now, as I’m writing this from Florence, Italy, on a study abroad. Did I actually think this would happen, that the trip would persevere past potential cancellation or postponement? Well, I thought I did, but upon arrival, I realized just how much I neglected to see this semester across the ocean as a tangible reality. I definitely thought the whole “study abroad emotional ups and downs” graph was BS, with the “initial excitement” leading into “homesickness” or whatever. I don’t get homesick! This is, obviously, a lie. And as Phoebe says in “Kyoto,” “Guess I lied / I'm a liar / Who lies.” Also, I developed a weird sense of place during the pandemic, because of all the back and forth. Everytime I left a place: Texas, Nashville, even a friend’s house, it felt like I had to peel myself off of it, like I was leaving a piece of myself behind in all that bodily transport. I missed every place I left, which landed me in a headspace of wishing to be elsewhere. And, unsurprising to probably anyone else who has studied abroad, I deeply felt the lyrics, “I wanted to go, but I didn't / I wanted to see the world / Then I flew over the ocean / And I changed my mind” my first week here. I thought there were all these things I wanted: to travel, to meet new people, to have new experiences, to get out of the house after 8 months. But then, suddenly I didn’t. I didn’t know where I wanted to be. As Phoebe put it, “you come home and you’re like, “Well, where do I want to be, because I don’t want to be here either.” Of all the times leaving had stung, it had hurt the most to peel myself off from home and to go 5,000 miles away. It hurt to try and have this life-changing experience amidst all this death and devastation. And I felt (and feel) a little selfish for having these very insular problems. I realized I was a completely different person from the last time I had crossed the Atlantic, and I didn’t know if it was in a good way. I think the loss of who I’d been jolted me harder than I expected. The searing want to get her back discombobulated me. The wanting is this: to go home and to stay at the same time. I’m always changing my mind.

In “Chinese Satellite,” Phoebe explores belief, faith, and feeling like home with a person. The want to “go home,” whether that is to a person or a place that’s not visible.

In the first chorus, 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.” It’s no secret that the pandemic has been way harsh on the faith of pretty much everyone. It’s difficult to try and reconcile the hardships on the planet with a great divine plan for humanity, and it’s easy to say that I’d never really happened upon an especially difficult period for my beliefs until this past year. I think we can all relate to the fact that faith in all its forms has been tested by the pandemic.

It’s true; I want to believe, but I’ll admit that many times this past year, even in striving for that belief, I felt nothing. I wanted to be wrong, and I wanted some big sign or obvious act of God that would show me the way back (“I want to believe / That if I go outside I'll see a tractor beam / Coming to take me to where I'm from / I want to go home”).

Where Phoebe finds connection and faith in this song, and where I have felt it recently, is through people. One of my favorite lines in the song happens when Phoebe admits she doesn’t believe you go anywhere after you die, “But you know I'd stand on the corner / Embarrassed with a picket sign /If it meant I would see you when I die,” representing her loyalty to this person by going against what she thinks is true to be with them. And while I do believe you go somewhere after death, I think we can be so enamored with someone that we’d do anything they ask of us, like in “Graceland Too” when Phoebe sings, “I would do anything you want me to / I would do anything for you… Whatever she wants (Whatever you want).” You love this person so deeply that what they want becomes what you want, or, that what you want is them.

I think I realized that faith can be found through people, that they’re sent into your life for a reason; you can see God through them, even when you’re doubting, and that doubting doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s evident when you’re running through a rainy campus after pulling an all-nighter, when you’re falling asleep while reading in a cabin in Oklahoma, when you’re dying of laughter in an escape room in Tennessee, when you’re icing a cake quite badly at the home of your oldest friend.

The album opener, “Garden Song,” represents for me in a pandemic context the way it feels to emerge on the other side, or at least to be on the verge of emerging. The song as a whole focuses on themes of growth and breaking new ground, setting aside past resentments. It’s contentment with where you are.

I think it’s hard to look back and say with any accuracy how much I’ve changed, if I’ve had any growth at all this past year. Sometimes it feels like it’s only been regression, which I’m hoping everyone else can relate to.

Phoebe sings about a recurring dream in the song (“I’m at the movies, I don’t remember what I’m seeing”), but mentions a different dream in an interview, “I have the recurring dream of, you get onstage and you’re really late and then every instrument you touch is broken. I’ll wake up in COVID reality, and I’m like, “I would kill to have my nightmares be real.” How do you move on from a time so horrible that even your nightmares are a better place to be? How do you remember what you wanted in the first place?

According to Phoebe, you just have to go: “I hopped a fence when I was seventeen / then I knew what I wanted.” The discovery of want is a precious process, cultivated over years of discarded interests and unanswered questions, yawns in classes and staring out of windows, but at some point you have to decide.

I think I missed the feeling of coming home tired, of being able to immediately fall asleep once my head hit the pillow. Loss of motivation isn’t a warm feeling. I needed something to propel me back to that easy transition between waking and rest: “No I’m not afraid of hard work / I get everything I want,” is a lyric I lived by for my whole life, and I needed to work for something again.

I recently got an internship where I get to write every week, and also get published, which is very exciting for my narcissist side, and good for the part of me that wants to work towards something. Younger me would be ecstatic if she knew.

Walking through Florence to class on quiet mornings, actually raising my hand and contributing to a class discussion, putting more thought and care into my projects again; these have all helped my resentment to grow smaller. Thinking on the people who are proof of my faith and looking up at the history that’s engraved in every building of this city has too.

Phoebe ends “Garden Song” with swelling music around the lyric, “I have everything I wanted.” It sounds like the feeling of finding peace, of being proud of your accomplishments. I think I can agree with her.