Indigo

Following her break-up with fellow singer Indigo Sparke in 2020, Adrianne Lenker retreated to an isolated, one-room cabin deep in western Massachusetts and recorded her renowned album, songs, from which she gave us “anything,” a raw indie-folk track with an earthy, delicate feel. It is obvious from its lyrics that Lenker's complicated feelings surrounding Indigo and their separation are what spawned the creation of the album. Lenker is sweet to Indigo in “anything,” and she does not hesitate to name her explicitly. She speaks directly to Indigo, not only in this track, but throughout the entire album. While using names in her music is not a new approach for Lenker, songs does it in a way that is distinct from the rest of her discography. 

Interviewed shortly after the release of songs, Lenker said, “Maybe I used fewer names, but in a way I feel it links more directly to actual people than anything I’ve made before. It’s probably the most personal thing that I’ve made.”

While Lenker’s other albums—both her solo work and the ones with her band, Big Thief—do not shy away from addressing her personal life, it is easy to understand why Lenker believes this about songs, specifically. In many ways, her other work seems to focus on the past. “Mythological Beauty,” from Big Thief's 2017 album Capacity, details moments in Lenker’s childhood. From her estranged brother that she’s never met, to getting impaled by a railroad spike at age 5, all the lyrics speak of what happened to Lenker years ago. Many of the songs on her 2014 album, a-sides and besides, are similarly about past happenings. While there are a handful of lyrics on songs that deal with Lenker’s past—“half return,” for example, about childhood nostalgia and returning to her home state of Indiana—the majority of the album is either about or deeply influenced by Lenker’s current state of mind. In the same interview, she stated, “These songs emerged from feeling a lot of pain and a lot of grief internally, acknowledging a lot of feelings.” 

Songs is intensely personal because Lenker is actively going through what she is describing, and her fresh heartbreak is so obviously laced into every word of lyric, into every inch of the album, and that, I think, is why she resonated so strongly with me when I heard her music for the first time. I was then 13, and one of her songs had come on during Spotify’s automatic shuffle. I quickly understood that Lenker and I had nothing in common. She was intimate, and gentle, and unafraid to speak about her feelings, and I did not speak much at all back then. I was quiet, and I was awkward, and I could go hours and hours without saying a single word because to speak, to express myself unabashedly the way Lenker did so easily, was terrifying to me. Perhaps my obsession was partially fueled by the jealousy I held towards Lenker, towards her seemingly effortless freedom and acts of expression. Some of it, I’m sure, was just teenage fangirling, but it was also a lens into a state of mind I was not familiar with. As in: I didn’t think I would ever be able to allow myself to be seen the way Lenker boldly displays herself in songs. So, by obsessing over the album, I was letting myself become privy to a world very different from mine. I religiously listened to Adrianne Lenker, and I prayed for a day to come when I wouldn’t be scared anymore. If I could not be bold like Lenker was, I could at least pore over her music, as if my obsession would allow me to personify her.

I would listen to “forwards beckon rebound,” for example, a melodic folk song with an acoustic sound that is rooted in Lenker’s religious trauma and the act of moving on from her past, and despite the incongruity of our experiences, I would find relatability in lyrics like, “Pulling your face close, wanting the inmost / Show me /  I'm not afraid of you now.” The same went for tracks like “zombie girl” and “ingydar,” and just about every other track on the album.

But, out of all of the 11 tracks featured on songs, “anything” has always been my favorite. It’s Lenker’s most popular song, having amassed almost 400 million streams over 6 years, and having almost doubled the amount of streams of her second most popular song, “not a lot, just forever.” It was not the first Adrianne Lenker song I had heard, but it quickly became my most frequently repeated, because shortly after I discovered Lenker’s music, I met a girl who allured me almost as much as songs had, and I found that my thoughts turned only to her when I heard the opening chords of “anything.”

We met in October of our 8th grade year. We were paired together for a group project, and I remember thinking that this girl, with a heap of charms clipped to her backpack’s zipper, and a faint hue of purple dye in the very ends of her blonde hair, might’ve been the coolest person at our school. She was like an angel I was blessed just to be witnessing. She was the subject of all the poorly written, attempted poetry that littered my notes app and all my notebooks. She was as infatuating to me as Lenker was.

Thinking about her was easy. She was not anything like me. She was kind and gentle in the same way Lenker is in “anything;” and, as convoluted as it sounds, she was, in a way, my version of Lenker’s “Indigo.” In one of my sappy, middle school-ish poems about her, I even used “Indigo” as her code name. Using her real name was a bit too serious for me, I guess. 

She was all I thought of when I listened to “anything,” and lyrics like “I don't wanna talk about anything / I wanna kiss, kiss your eyes again” took on new meaning when I was around her. 

My “Indigo” was human in a way I longed to be. People seemed to be drawn to her, and it was effortless for her to talk to strangers, and effortless for her to be liked by strangers, and she wanted to be around me. 

She invited me to eat lunch with her and her friends, and she sought me out to sit next to in our shared classes, and she grinned at me valiantly when I complimented her nails, or her outfit, and she would always compliment me right back. 

But that did not make my anxiety dissipate. Something as simple as a crush could not change a part of me that has always existed. I think I must’ve been born already fearful, because I cannot remember a time when I have lived unafraid to speak. I have been consumed by this fear my whole life, and it has ruined me over and over again.

So, while my fixation with Lenker has remained to this day, the same cannot be said for me and my “Indigo.” It was my fault, almost certainly, that our friendship fell apart, because I never really approached her outside of class. I never got to know most of her friends. I never took her up on her lunch invitations. The act of going up to her and sitting at her table felt impossible, even if she wanted me there. What if pulling up a chair next to her just annoyed her? What if she was just being nice, and didn’t really want me to sit with her? Maybe it’s stupid to be anxious over something so simple and so effortless for everyone else, but it felt like some invisible being had forced a painfully tight hand over my mouth, because I couldn’t make myself speak even when I desperately wanted to. And what was I supposed to do? I wasn’t ready to face my fears. I wondered if “Indigo” had ever had to face her fears. Had she already fought against them and won? If she had, then what would she think of me, still stuck and unable to move forward? I couldn’t act like how she wanted me to act. I couldn’t be normal and go up to her like she could so easily do to me. I have never been normal, and I have known that since I was in third grade and seated in some psychologist’s brightly-colored office. I have known that since the pool of dread in my stomach became permanent.

Our friendship started in October, and ended somewhere in the early weeks of April. It was short-lived, and now all that it will ever be is awkward.

I’m sure she thought I was just avoiding her out of spite, or needless cruelty, or that I was just a mean person, at heart. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was just scared, and I know now that my fear does not purify me, but how could I ever be as nice and as gentle as she was when I was always so afraid of everything? It didn’t seem feasible. 

I continued to overplay “anything,” and lyrics like “But I couldn't say the words like you / I was scared, indigo, but I wanted to,” served only as reminders of her and everything I had done wrong.  

Sometimes, when I listen to songs, all I can think about is being 13 and writing bad poetry about a girl in my math class. It is hard to move on from previous connotations, but, recently, I’ve found myself being able to listen to songs all the way through without thinking about my “Indigo” at all. Recently, I have found myself able to talk to anyone with barely any panic in my way.

Songs is my favorite of Lenker’s work because she did not wait for time to pass before detailing her and Indigo’s breakup into words. She did her time in that isolated cabin, and she faced whatever grief she felt head on. She chose to speak freely, to be intensely and publicly vulnerable in songs, and if she was ever scared to do so, she was able to move past her worries.

I am not at all like Adrianne Lenker. I was not as brave as she was, and maybe I never will be. It has taken me years to even try to be. And, while I can’t go back in time and change how I dealt with my middle-school crush, I think, now that it is on paper, I can leave it behind me and finally start thinking about the present.