I saw Nick Drake
At the corner of time and motion
I caught his eye
And he caught mine
I said "You're tall"
He said "No taller than tomorrow's ocean"
I saw Nick Drake
And he was fine

The song is delicate and tinged with sadness, which is just what you'd expect from someone paying homage to a modern day Keats, a preternaturally gifted poet taken from us far too soon. But when Hitchcock delivers that last line, you can really believe that it's all okay now; it serves as a bit of closure for everyone who loved Nick Drake's music, and for everyone who found echoes of their own life struggles in Drake's lifelong battle with depression, insomnia, and introversion.

Many of us never knew of Drake's work during his lifetime, and so his music goes hand in hand with his biography. This community of listeners was never given the chance to mourn Drake's passing as a group, but Hitchcock's song serves as a kind of affirmative eulogy, a shared mental space where we can remember Drake together.

It's a war on war
There's a war on
You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die

——"War on War"


Tall buildings shake
Voices escape
Singing sad sad songs
Tuned to chords
Strung down your cheeks
Bitter melodies
Turning your orbit around

Voices whine
Skyscrapers are scraping together
Your voice is smoking
Last cigarettes
Are all you can get
Turning your orbit around

——"Jesus, Etc."


I would like to salute
The ashes of American flags
And all the fallen leaves
Filling up shopping bags

——"Ashes of American Flags"

The thing is, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was written and recorded months before the 9.11 terrorist attacks (some internet sources claim that the album's original release date was supposed to be September 11, 2001). Even the cover, which shows the twin towers of a Chicago apartment complex, is a chilling reference to the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and yet it was also chosen well before 9.11. It's an odd quirk of fate that the record wasn't released until 2002 given the eerie prescience of the record's tone and lyrics; Wilco's original record company decided that the album wasn't marketable, so they gave the masters back to the band, who then took several months to find a new label to release and promote the record.

Over the years, it's gotten easier for me to separate the songs of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from the events of September 11, 2001, but there will always be that subtle historical connection to the attacks that will never completely vanish. It's what I was listening to as I was in the midst of my when the walls fell project, which collected responses to the attacks from more or less ordinary Americans, capturing that slice in time six months after the attacks when the events were still raw and painful but just distant enough that we were able formulate some sort of coherent retelling of that day.

I still can't hear Jeff Tweedy sing, in his weary, haunting voice, any of the lyrics I've quoted above without flashing back to that time, without instantly tapping into that complex web of emotions that all of us were wrapped up in in the months immediately following the attacks.

We have to take away small blessings where we can, especially when we're trying to cope with things as monumental and overwhelming as 9.11, and I guess it's some kind of blessing that I had a record this good that helped me, and continues to help me, as I tried to make some kind of sense of these events and how our nation and our lives have changed as a result of them.