Colin Meloy
The Decemberists' frontman talks about the violence of childbirth.
by Sarah Hepola
January 30, 2007
I wanted to talk about a few songs on the album. "You'll Not Feel the Drowning" sounds kind of like a lullaby — albeit a very twisted lullaby about drowning someone.
When I first did the demo, Hank was a couple weeks old, and I remember [guitarist] Chris Funk's girlfriend was like, "Isn't that weird? He's singing that to Hank." I think a lot of people misread it that way. But it's actually based on a part of In Patagonia, the hippie travel writing book. There's an amazing passage where [author Bruce Chatwin] is talking about a ship in a squall and these cabin boys are down in the berth, and one of the cabin boys says to the younger ones, "Shut up, go to sleep, and you won't feel anything." It's not really about killing someone.
But this is a darker batch of songs than your previous albums. Would you agree?
Yeah, I would. I was conscious of that at the time. I remember thinking, Here I am getting ready to have a child and usually this is the point where people, like, dumb things down a little bit.
Were you working out some kind of anxiety?
The only sense I can make of it is, well, a couple things. For one, pregnancy and gearing up for birth is a crazy, gruesome thing. I mean, at one point we watched this video about home birth, and there was just blood and fluid and all this terrible moaning. And then there's Carson getting bigger and bigger and having crazy heartburn. Childbirth, in general, is a gruesome experience, so some of the imagery maybe grew out of that. The other thing is that, in imagining having a kid, I was also going back to my own childhood, and I had a really morbid imagination. I was really into axe murderers and knights and really violent things, oddly enough, and I think that's often the default setting for children. We try to forget about that but they love things that are gruesome and gory.
That reminds me of a recent New Yorker article I read about children's books.
Exactly, that was really striking. How there are all these kids' books about trying to get your kid to go to sleep, but kids just love violence and potty humor.
Does Hank have a favorite children's book?
Well, he's six months old, so he has a favorite book to gnaw on.
Okay, do you have a favorite children's book to read to him?
We have Good Night Gorilla, and I really like that. It's one of those go-to-sleep parables, even though it's the gorilla who's trying to go to sleep.
Do you think there's a parenting book that doesn't totally suck?
We stayed away from What to Expect When You're Expecting. I've heard a lot of negative things — that it's more traditional, maybe not a very green approach. We used the Sears parenting book for pregnancy, and for our baby books, we have a book called Your Baby and Child, and the A to Z Guide to Parenting, which is a pediatrician guide. We found that they said wildly different things, so we played them off one another. If we didn't like what one book said, we went to the other book.
What's the most useful gift you received as a new parent?
One of the best things was these Mustela baby wipes. They have this really nice line of baby products, which we got in a gift pack. After the baby wipes were through, we went and bought some others at the co-op, just like Seventh Generation baby wipes or whatever, and they were crap compared to the Mustela, so we just had to go back. They're just thick and soft and they smell kind of nice, while most baby wipes just smell nasty. But the problem is they cost three times as much as regular baby wipes. We're really pratical people, in general, but we only use those.
That gift bag was like a neighborhood crack sample.
Yes, they gave me just enough to get me hooked.
So if the Decemberists' children were facing off against Stephen Colbert's children, who would win?
Huh. How old are his kids?
They're older.
The thing is, we've got a ten-month-old and a six-month-old in our ranks. They can't do much worse than drool on them. Hank is developing a good tackle. But to be practical, we might have to concede.
©2007 Sarah Hepola and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sarah Hepola has been a high-school teacher, a playwright, a film critic, a music editor and a travel columnist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, and on NPR. She writes the Scanner blog for Nerve and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. |
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