People as places as people

Modest Mouse "People As Places As People" from A Bruntel on Vimeo.

I'm packing up for another move. Anytime I move from place to place, it feels like a breakup with a lover.

Georgetown, TX

Georgetown was the guy next door. My first kiss. The one who I practiced sharing secrets with. Who I pretended to have a grown-up life with. But it was always Austin, his older and cooler brother, that I kept on my radar-- swearing that one day when I'm ready to settle, we'd commit to each other.

San Diego, CA

San Diego was a hot shot. His radiant energy ignited my ambitions and awakened my ego. He made me aware of my Texan accent, which I consequently worked to hide. I knew he was loved by many, to the point that I questioned whether or not I could ever really have an intimate relationship. There were few quiet and intimate spaces... he wore his heart on his sleeve for transients and their 5-7 night stands. It was like dating somebody who's always the life of the party. And it was fun while it lasted.

I think my parents had hoped all along that I'd settle with Dallas, the son of a wealthy oil tycoon who doesn't believe poverty exists. He would provide for me financially, and that's about it. But he's never been too fond of me either. Not wanting to be enslaved to a mysogynistic future with Dallas, I decide to take steps to initiate a partnership with China. There is very little passion, but I know that this strategic partnership will allow me to maintain my independence. This all makes sense in my head, but my feet move slow, and instead take me in a totally different direction...
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"And the people you love, but you didn't quite know, they're the places that you wanted to go"
If this music video were the story of my life, I'd have brought home a saltwater fish or something from Oceania instead of a pine tree. Something so foreign to my upbringing that it makes my family a little uncomfortable.
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(Independent/Western) Samoa

Samoa was like the former neighbor of a friend of a friend's cousin that I caught eyes with on a walk by the river one day that triggered my infatuation. But somehow he had already been on my radar, and I had heard that he lived out in the woods somewhere. The more I realized how little I knew about this guy, the more my infatuation grew. I saw him as the missing piece to who I wanted to be. Growing up, I felt stifled by gender roles and the idea of impersonal relationships. While I was with Samoa, he taught me how to be human again. For a moment, I felt complete, and I felt like I had found a home. This passed though, as it slowly sank in that my history and context lies in another time and place, and that if I stayed, one puzzle piece would remain, but the rest might fade away.

North Carolina

North Carolina was the quiet and understanding friend that let me cry in his bed all day after I had broken up with Samoa, only to realize it was too late for me to try to go back "home".

Homelessness/Free Love

It was somewhere in between NC and Georgia that I decided it's okay to be "homeless". And then once I'd grasped that, it was like 1960s free love all over the country. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Hampshire, Massachussets, Maine, and then Hawaii.

How I ended up back in the middle of the Pacific, I still don't know. They say that if you don't find closure when ending a relationship, you're bound to look for qualities from the former relationship in a new partner.


But no matter what, I'll always have my fish with me. Because we are the places that we wanted to go...