revisiting helplessness blues

fleet foxes and the "best what the f am i gonna do with my life album ever"

[t.kruste]

as someone in their early twenties, this video is very much appreciated. I am once again amazed by how when you use your words, you speak directly into my soul.

[historylass]

I find many of Fleet Foxes songs pertinent, and Helplessness Blues is a go-to for when I feel a little lost. Thank you for the video.

[Nicole_Noga]

The Breakfast Club has changed for me over the years. I first saw it as a kid (10-ish maybe?), and I thought they were all so grown up and cool. Watching it in high school, I empathized. Brian's story about the elephant lamp and the flare gun captured the way I felt as a high-achieving nerd who was perilously unfamiliar with failure. As an adult, I find this movie both adorable and heartbreaking. The characters are *so young*. I want to give them all a hug and tell them they're going to be okay.

[MattPalka]

Really enjoyed your reflections on how it’s okay to start over in a place with a new or similar story that rhymes if the one we are telling us isn’t serving us anymore. A story can carve change in lots of places, and not simply be one that only complies and be a cog in a machine. We can be indispensable to something and be rooted to it with good company. And build better on top of what’s already in place. Adulthood isn’t letting everything we rely on go. Depends on the change we want to make. There is lots of change worth doing that might not work.

Stephen Paulus’ choral song The Road Home got sang at my high school to send off graduating seniors at the last choral concert of the year for the decade or so before the music teacher retired. Because I was really into video recording from my dad, I recorded concerts each year with family help and the lyrics of the song, which I’ve permanently memorized by now, have really grown with me over time. I even got to stitch together a video of each year group singing parts of the song if you’d like to see it. The penultimate line “there is no such beauty as where you belong” reminds me all the time that I belong always in terms of being forever connected to nature, and that I get to belong in how I choose to matter, make meaning, and add value in places where people are making better happen, like in the future of collective creation as you said. We make it to the other side together.

[oddsockable]

I think 'Soon Soon' by Tom Rosenthal is this song for me. I listened to it obsessively when I was waiting for my A Level results and have come back to it whenever a change is about to arrive. The core meaning hasn't necessarily changed for me, but I use it to let go of the nerves and be hopeful about the possibility in all sorts of situations - 'today was just a day/ and you dealt with it ok/ but tomorrow is a boy who needs to run/ everything is about to change/ but I say bring it closer to me.'

[eddiecational]

I read recently that Will.I.Am has been driving around LA this year with Fleet Foxes on loop, for literally hours on end, which was deeply endearing to me because, yes Will, we've all absolutely been there in one way or another. Helplessness Blues is such a moving song that, as you say, hits different year on year. Sunblind by Fleet Foxes is one that I didn't click with at first, but the more times I listen the more I connect with the themes of gratitude to artists for the legacies they leave behind. Thank you for this video!!

[melodiesandmemories]

In high school my favorite song was Let the Rain by Sara Bareilles. It felt like it yearned the exact way I yearned. I listened to it recently and realized it’s a song about anxiety. I just got a diagnosis, and the line “If I were fearless then I’d speak my truth, and the world would hear this, that’s what I wish I’d do” is exactly how my anxiety feels. Being medicated now, I can see that what I thought was fear in myself was really just anxiety, and now getting help for it makes me feel a lot more fearless.

[unclassedmedia]

your words were more needed than you might imagine.

[pedroteodoro]

one of the most gourgeos videos i have ever seen, in a day that i, myself, dont feel too confident about me and the future. The video helped a lot, thank you <3

[TaliaOutwrong]

The Silvia Plath fig tree is definitely a piece that speaks to that coming of age yearning, I also think Woolf’s A room of One’s Own has a lot of those themes, but pushes them to ask that question of women broadly, as suffrage really began. It always seemed to capture that bittersweet element of desire, where you know (somewhere deep down) that achieving your desire wont really ever satisfy you, but striving and yearning and following that desire fills you with purpose so you chase it anyway.

I almost feel like every piece of art I’ve ever come back to, I came back to as a different person and found a different thing there. Even if it was only a little bit of empathy for the person who I was, clinging desperately to art that made life more understandable or even just a little more bearable.

Thanks so much for such a thoughtful video!

[theemeraldruby]

Boy do I wish we had video replies on YouTube because this is going to be a long one!

Fleet foxes transition from a band I enjoyed to one of my all time favorite bands (and reason I write folk songs) overnight.

I play flute in a folk band called the button collective, and we were hired by a long time supporter to play a wake when her husband passed. This wake was held in St Albans, a tiny town in Australia which sits on the banks of a river nestled between the mountains. To get there you have to drive for an hour without reception.

So we played the wake, and it was the most beautiful celebration of life. So many memories, so much merriment, but then as all things do the wake came to an end. One by one everyone went home and then it was just us and the family. Watching them realise it was over and he was really gone was one of the most heart breaking moments I've ever been part of. We shared tears and goodbyes and then I had to drive home.

As I was shuffling my iPod trying to find something to listen to, a shrine/an argument came on. It was the perfect track, followed by the the rest of fleet foxes back catalogue. I cried all the way home listening to their stunning music

[Looooading...]

Spirited Away, the Truman Show, and New Girl. I have craved these in different phases of my life, and I always get something different out of them. I am still looking forward to the day that I watch New Girl and laugh at the young adults that don't yet have their lives together. My life feels like messes, transitions, train stations, and airports. All of these pieces are about transition and exploring the in-between, whether it's an awkward or devastating transition.

[HM]

not me teary at breakfast time watching this

[joeymason]

I'm graduating college with a thousand ideas and no clear plan this spring -- I REALLY needed to hear that. You write though my heart like a damn javelin as always. Crow Song by Haley Heynderickx is the equivalent for me, highly recommend.

[Cloven]

Hey you are a good writer.

I cannot explain the moments I've been through with Fleet Foxes. I viciously lost all trace of reality once when I was 23. THE ONLY THING I trusted was Fleet Foxes.

I cannot believe that year actually happened.

[acidset]

Beautifully said and glad it gave you some introspection.
Liked and subbed

[chibbyranjo]

He Doesn’t Know Why from Fleet Foxes first self titled album. Absolutely destroys me at times. There’s something about the voices on that whole album that get to my bones. It’s haunting but in a really welcome way. In the years since that album, I’ve trained as a therapist. Was this music the beginning of learning to be comfortably uncomfortable? That’s the essence of my work. Reaching down into the darkest recesses of yourself and accepting what stares back.

[matthewwalker]

I usually don't enjoy ambiguous life advice - it's an ongoing joke between me and my parents that I call them "wankerisms" - but you tricked me with anecdote into learning about myself

Mainly that my demand for independence is unsustainable

[miloparker]

The album "Forget and Not Slow Down" by Relient K has been my favorite album for a long time. I even got a quote from it ("resurrect the saint from within the wretch") tattooed on me on my 19th birthday. I was always really moved by the way that the songs illustrate grief and all of its phases. But now, being close to the age of the band when it was written and having gone through those gut-wrenching situations it pulls from, it strikes an entirely different chord. I love it just the same, if not more, but its meaning is new.

[floxy]

Adele's "Someone like you", the first time i heard it was like ""ok, shes very sad and heartbroken. I can understand". nbd. then it was March of 2022 and my perception changed to "Oh jesus f*k oh god it hurts".
also, future as a collective creation is.... such a hopeful phrase thank u sm