So, I didn't think this would be a hard post to write, and it wasn't - it's been in my head for awhile. I find those "this album changed my life" essays at once really revealing and really annoying and chock full of hyperbole. I am not guaranteeing that this blog post will not be more of the same, but it's really from my heart, if that helps matters.
On September 21, 1999, I was depressed. I also bought The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails.
Now, I had always been a sensitive, emotional kid and I had a sickly stage, so I guess you could argue that "depressed" was my default for the first 20 something years of my life, but 1999 was a rough year. I was struggling to find paying work and trying to make do with paying rent with a part time, minimum wage salary (this was a job that decided to "reward" me for my hard work with a raise - $5.50 an hour. I was just experimenting with contract work, and had no clue what I was doing. I had rent/credit card/student loan shit due and the non-profit I was working at owed me money and they were months behind, so I was living off of Creamettes and Prego for weeks. I was taking a Ph.D level class I honestly was not at all ready for and trying to figure out what my future was going to be - and if it was worth it, so I was kind of a crossroads on that level and too proud to really admit to needing help.
But most importantly, my grandmother had died that summer and I was still gutted from that.
Many of my friends reading this blog never got to meet my grandmother. We were very close, and very similar so we were at once affectionate and contentious with each other. I fought with my grandmother in ways I never fought with my mom - maybe because my grandmother held onto me a little longer, being the youngest - and it stung more when I started to assert myself. But, being the other introvert in family that was a 50/50 split, I could articulate my feelings to her differently. She was one of the few people that I could be completely honest about my shyness, my melancholy - stuff that I felt, well ... judged, or at least evaluated, for when I talked about it in public.
So when she died, it was ... I can't really describe how it felt. I just felt alone in a way I had never felt before, and I had no clue what to do. That entire summer just kind of got swallowed in a void. It was a bad year. I put on a good face in front of friends and family - or at least tried to, but I really felt this big pit in my soul that was just the worst feeling ever. I couldn't name it, I couldn't make it go away, I was ashamed of it because I thought it made me weak. And the person I felt I could explain this to was gone. I was just unbearably lonely.
So I bought The Fragile on midnight of September 21, 1999. I stayed at my job until midnight, walked to the record store, went back to my job and listened to it three times then went home at 3 a.m. I bought it at midnight because well, it's a Nine Inch Nails album, and when you are a NIN fan that's just what you do. And like most people I was a fan of The Downward Spiral, Broken, etc. I had always loved NIN, but ...
I freaked out the first time I heard this album because I swear it was like someone put a microscope into my brain. It was at the time, and probably still, the truest, most honest musical expression of someone's grief and depression I had ever heard and it just shocked me at the time - because I didn't feel like that was allowed.
I think a lot of NIN fans connect with The Downward Spiral because it's about release. That album is just anger, lust, catharsis exploding right in your face. The Fragile has no such release; it's world-weary and reflective - from the beginning tinny guitar strums of "Somewhat Damaged" to the last atonal chords of "Ripe (with Decay)" that album is just emotionally stagnant.
It's uncomfortable and tense and it never offers any moment of relief, really. And damn I really needed that at the time. I couldn't articulate how I felt at time. Words escaped me, it was a suffocating feeling. So to hear an album that was able to give a shape and voice to what I couldn't provided with me more solace than you can imagine. And course, to find that this album was reportedly inspired by Trent Reznor grieving the death of his own grandmother made me relate to it even more.
Now, at the time, those critics who were not lauding The Fragile as NIN's most musically mature work were calling it NIN's most self-indulgent album to date. There is a certain self - indulgence that comes with depressive feelings, I'll admit. And now, as someone who is no longer depressed, I can say that some of the lyrics on that album are like DRAMATASTIC. But I think after a decade of listening to it objectively (and obsessively) a lot of its flaws, at least to me, make the album what it is: not perfect, but very honest. It was clearly not made to hit the top 40 charts but because Trent had to get it out. It features about five instrumental tracks, and these almost orchestral arrangements and repeating musical lines and motifs, at the time, the least commercially accessible of his discography. (Ghosts I -IV has probably replaced The Fragile for that distinction.)
I'm glad I've had 10 years to listen and to reevaluate this masterpiece. Yeah, fuck you I said it. It is.
It's been a long time; my life has gotten a lot better. The job/money stuff, yeah. But even more importantly feeling at peace enough with myself and my feelings - my depression - to be able to define and express it.
In the past 10 years, I've found that my grandmother was not the only one who would/could hear these things, I just needed to feel comfortable and confident enough to share myself and to find a way out of that dark hole. And when I do feel like those feelings may take hold again, I will throw on The Fragile as a reminder of how it used to be, and rejoice in the fact that it's in the past.
Did The Fragile change my life directly? Maybe. It does make me believe in the power of music - all types of music - to provide solace and support in an intangible way. I think maybe it did give me a boost of courage to express myself more, that I was not alone.
So today, it's the 10th anniversary of this album, and I was so stoked to see all these folks on Twitter mentioning what this album meant for them personally. Or just that they loved it. So while I would love to one day tell Trent Reznor this in person, in case I never do:
Thanks, Trent. Thanks for sharing what was a such a difficult time in your life with your fans. You may not have known (or cared) at the time, but I think you may have helped a lot of people heal from whatever they were going through with this album. I know it helped me. I'm glad you're not in that world anymore, and neither am I.
