Unbest

Melanie Killingsworth on Arcade Fire’s “Keep the Car Running” (from Neon Bible, 2007)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) 

I grew up in an extremely conservative fundamentalist setting. (And then got out, and then grew up wanting to be a writer, and then started an essay with a clichéd bit about my childhood.) My first exposure to music, my exploration of various genres and the lengths to which I snuck to listen to forbidden fruit make essays in and of themselves. As a teenager, I began distancing myself from all the narrow standards and theology I was raised with. I also started exploring “rock music.” But it wasn’t until 2011 that a trumpet blasted, the heavens opened and it hit me what “Keep the Car Running” was really about.

I think whether you’ve come to the same conclusion, and whether you agree with me, has a lot to do with your story. Whether your omnipresent childhood fears—instilled by incessant repetition of larger-than-life rhetorical threats—still linger no matter how many empty rooms you inhabit or people you live with.

This song is all about the Rapture, the potential of instantaneous judgement, about how once you gave Them your name, it’s like a telemarketing racket. You can never get yourself off the list.

I put this song on my playlist titled “Embracing Clichés.” The year 2011 didn’t mark some huge turning point in my personal struggle with fundamentalism, or my struggle against my knee-jerk struggle against fundamentalism, or any of the infinite regress of struggles against knee-jerk struggles against knee-jerk struggles. But, like every year for the past decade, 2011 brought a little more closure, a little less anger, a little more ability to honestly assess what those years meant and what they’ll continue to mean.

They mean the celestial city will appear to me when I sleep. They mean I’ll be thinking about not coming home one night, for supernatural reasons. They mean I read a lot into the perfectly placed pause and emphasis in the line: “Oh when / Is it coming?” The pause both asks when an inevitable event will occur, and asking if it’s actually, certainly, inevitable. This pause and this song perfectly encapsulates this one aspect of my religious background; specifically, the manifestations of a childhood boogeyman in an adult world, and the acknowledgement I’ll always admit the possibility he’s real and coming for me.

They mean I’ll keep the car running.

Melanie Killingsworth is a writer, video editor, and filmmaker in Madison, Wis.