Neko Case: Saved By Song

Source: Ebru Yildiz, used with permission

In her songs, Neko Case has stood inside a lovesick tornado and stepped into the moon’s shoes. The singer, songwriter, and visual artist is known for her lyrical precision, clever storytelling, and haunting voice, both as a founding member of long-running indie band The New Pornographers and on solo albums like Middle Cyclone and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. In a new memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Case looks back on a childhood spent largely in isolation, exploring how a girl “raised by two dogs and a space heater” turned the woods around her home into poems and songs, finally taking shelter and finding connection in the saving power of music and art.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Psychology Today: Your mother faked her own death when you were very young, only to resurface a few years later. Was making sense of that a motivator for writing the book?

Neko Case: Writing about my mother was actually not something I wanted to do. She is a part of my story—but just a thread that goes through it, not the focus. I wrote the book because I wanted to remember some really great things about my childhood, too, as well as focus on what would steer somebody toward being a creative and explore how the funnels of life took me to that spot.

PT: How did you map out that journey?

NC: I’m a neurodivergent person, extreme ADHD, so I tend to start in the middle of things and then work outward from there. That’s the same whether I’m writing a book or writing a song; I definitely didn’t approach the book on a linear, David Copperfield-like timeline. But when I write songs, I’m trying to make a story that’s kind of like a little movie. The book was different because there’s no big apex to my story: I’ve never, like, slept with a famous person or won a major award. To me, to be in a creative field is not about arriving or winning; it’s about being present and realizing that you’re never going to get anywhere. You’re already there.

PT: Detached parents, rural surroundings, and intense shyness resulted in much of your childhood being spent in solitude. How did that affect you?

NC: The metaphor of loneliness being like starvation is very apt, because when you don’t get enough nutrients or food, it changes you, it changes your ability to take things in. Sometimes I forget that I’m wired a little differently, that I can come on kind of strong or seem rather boundaryless, and accepting love from people, trusting people, and building long-term bonds with people can be hard for me. But I’ve done a lot of work to be able to do those things less enthusiastically—or less overenthusiastically, such as it were.

PT: Did that solitude influence the way you write songs?

NC: I always think about Björk—how English is her second or third language and how the way she uses English is distilled through her learning it in England. And I think she writes some of the most beautiful poetry in English because it was not her first language. Sometimes I wonder if it’s had that effect on me too; English is my first language, but I didn’t use it as much as other languages, just because I didn’t have anyone to really talk to as a kid.

PT: What other languages did you use?

NC: I think nature is the first language that imprinted on me. The visual and sensual language of the senses—I’ve always kept that close. And how I use that language now is often specific to where I lived as a child; when I think of a tree, I think of a Douglas fir because that’s what I was around when I was little. That language has grown over the years as I’ve learned about and experienced other things—that’s where things like sharks and tornados come into my songs. But that natural language is linked with my English skills; one doesn’t exist without the other.

Source: Grand Central Publishing, used with permission

PT: Some of your songs tell contained stories, but others are open-ended. Are you ever surprised by how listeners interpret them?

NC: I generally write leaving gaps. Some of them are purposely impressionistic; for others, I know what they mean, but I don’t want to ruin it for anyone else. I think of it like a punk rock vest—I write the song and I put my punk rock patches on there, but others also get to put on the vest and they can put their own patches on. It’s my song, but I want people to feel like part of it, to make part of it their own. So I’m never really surprised. The only real surprise I got once was a guy who was reviewing a record and writing about the song “Man.” He said, “Oh, another song about a spurned lover.” I was like Ew, gross. It’s not about that at all! It’s like, not even subtle! Where did you get that?

PT: You write that long before you realized you had a talent for music, you took solace in your school choir. How did singing help soothe your loneliness?

NC: Cheetahs are known for running really fast, and human beings can sing together. It’s one of our incredible superpowers. People don’t think about their instincts very much anymore, but singing is very closely connected to our instincts; creating vibration with other human beings is something we’ve done forever. I’m sure that, as a child, the endorphins or dopamine or whatever it is I got from singing felt good. But—and I don’t know how to explain this without sounding absolutely woo-woo—I think that vibration is healing. It’s incredibly communicative, on a deeper level than just being near someone. I think there are a lot of things that vibration shakes loose.