"Around the Corner" by Mike Mains & the Branches, Saturday, February 12, 2022 [trigger warning depression/ suicide]

When We Were in Love covers a wide range of topics. Most of the songs are love songs in which Mike Mains reminisces about falling in love with his wife and bandmate Shannon Mains. A few of the songs mention God and religion, but mostly in the way that a country song would. However, the most notable tracks on the album deal with Mike Mains' battles with depression and his marital problems. The songs most explicitly dealing with those topics are "Breathing Underwater" and "Swamp." Today's song, "Around the Corner"thematically matches with "Breathing Underwater" and "Swamp," though it doesn't seem to be an "in the moment account" of a depressive episode. Instead, Mains is reflecting on his experience, and hoping to give hope to his listeners. 

WITH HEAVEN’S MANSION OUT OF REACH.  There are two sides to this song. Though I believe that ultimate message is one of hope, Mains doesn't belittle the depressed experience. So often the clichés of acquaintances who just want us to stop bringing them down, only send us spiraling further. I often think of the quote from August: Osage County: “ Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of be able to get out of bed.” There's so many times I've been paralyzed by the fear of what might happen, that fear caused me to miss opportunities to make my life better. Very rarely the worst case scenario happens. And when something bad does happen, it's totally unexpected. I try to cling to a mantra my friend told me his therapist told him, "Don't worry about things until they happen." That stolen therapy session works, most of the time. We never really know what's around the corner, and it's actually a good thing. Would 2019 me live any differently knowing that a global pandemic was just around the corner? Other than investing in Zoom or home-delivery app stock, it's probably better not knowing what's next and just dealing with it as it happens.

EVERYBODY NEEDS A LITTLE BIT OF SUNSHINE.Taking a break from the theme of love, today I recommend a song that is unadulterated hope. Sure, the verses are all dark and gloomy, but the uplifting chorus reminds us that we're not in control of the future, which means that our worst-case-scenario predictions may not come true. And who knows, maybe something much better than expected will happen. Maybe even something, dare I say, good? Sometimes I think of a scene from the 2007 movie Charlie Bartlett, in which the titular character is trying to convince a classmate who attempted suicide that living is worth it, by telling him that he's "missing the bigger picture," namely that it's a great time to be alive, especially given that it's far more likely to have been born as a single-cell organism on one of the billions of other planets in the universe. Of course this doesn't make the classmate feel better. I also think about a quote from Ned Vizzini's Young Adult novel, It's Kind of a Funny Story: "Life can't be cured, but it can be managed." The novel and the movie encouraged me during dark times in a similar way that When We Were in Love encouraged me in 2019 and 2020. But it's important to remember that we have to keep managing life. Sadly, Ned Vizzini lost the battle to depression, which was puzzling to me at the time. I thought, didn't he just read his own words from his book about a teen who checks into a mental institution and learns tips for managing life? Or are his words just bullshit and depression is impossible to manage? But that's not how writing works. Vizzini, Mains, or the writer of Charlie Bartlett failing to live by the inspired words they penned doesn't make the words less true. We have to manage life. It will never be perfect. 

 

Read “Around the Corner” by Mike Mains & The Branches on Genius