If you're in a place, #14: Julien Baker on Song Exploder

November 27, 2019

Julien Baker on Song Exploder

The worst depression I ever struggled with happened in the summer of 2018. I taught summer school that year and would wake up each morning with just enough time to get to school and toss together a lesson for the day. The kids would talk to me, and it felt like their words were careening around me, touching my skin but not breaking into my brain. I’d go home and sleep, or I’d go home and drink, or I’d go home and convince someone else to drink with me so I could create some semblance of normality.

My friends talked about how absent I felt. We’d hang out for hours, and they’d text me later and say things like, “It felt like you were somewhere else the entire time.” It was hard to see this water even when I was drowning in it.

There was this static. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking anything. It’s not that I was thinking only sad things. It’s that everything in my mind had become muddled and hard to grab onto. And I couldn’t identify this all until I was out of it.

This is what Julian Baker’s music feels like. Atmospheric and haunting, her songs are layers upon layers of dreamy guitar riffs under her powerful voice. And it’s just her. Looping guitar parts on top of each other using a delay pedal. Sometimes these parts complement each other. Sometimes they create discord. And I can’t imagine a better way to musically represent the quiet, humming chaos that goes on in my head when I’m depressed.

Here’s Julien on the defining line of the song:

“The lyrical content is derived from actual conversations that I had with loved ones about feeling the immense isolation that results from living inside your own head and fear that you’ll always feel isolated and not being able to express that to another person.

“The line ‘You should try not to miss anymore appointments.’ was something that was said to me. Having someone say that and that being the only thing that can be offered in the way of comfort or encouragement felt empty and very fragile. And I remember being disappointed in that phrase and thinking it’s so detached and sterile and has nothing in the way of empathy attached to it. It was intended to be caring, but also when you’re in that isolated mindset, it’s difficult not to view things as a personal attack.

“And of course now that I’m two years removed from that, I understand how nuanced and delicate those situations are and how no one really knows what to offer another human being.”

And this was my biggest revelation last year as I was starting to come out of that deep depression: no one really knows what they can give you during these times. And what makes this even more difficult, is these are the times when it’s hardest to say what you need.

So we’re lost in disconnection. Friends want to help but don’t know how. You want to say what will help but can’t find the words. We are floating around each other.

But there’s always something resembling healing on the horizon. Sometimes it takes forever to show itself. Sometimes it means doing the same routine every day without seeing any progress until, one day, you wake up and feel a little bit more alive. Sometimes friends help you get there. Sometimes you pull yourself out. And sometimes, that healing doesn’t last quite long enough. And you find yourself back in the same place before you can fully bask in what feels like content.

As Baker says:

“I don’t purport to have everything figured out. That’s why singing about hopefulness on this record is very tentative. It’s like a provisional hope. No matter how small the pinhole of light is, it’s entirely possible that within the day, or the next week, or the next month, we could feel closer to something like joy.”

Julien Baker - "Appointments" (Official Video)