The only real question for New Hampshire was which song to pick from Okkervil River’s Silver Gymnasium. In the end, I chose Black Nemo. It isn’t really a song ‘about New Hampshire’ in some general sense. But it is a song about a specific kid who grew up there, about his sense of memory, and about the poetry of imperfect understanding. It speaks to me about the intense particularity of our own experiences, the pieces of our past that we feel but could never manage to truly explain.
There is a gesture toward the fantastical imagination of youth, toward the idea that the utterly mundane experience of growing up, somehow, for each of us manages to feel special. Because, weirdly, it is. The beaches we walked down, the songs we listened to, the long drives with our parents, these seemingly unspecific and meaningless events all still managed to build an entire world, a human consciousness, a completely unique and individuated identity. They constructed the eyes through which we see the universe, and therefore in a strange way, built an entire universe.