Me and Hannah Hunt
The Story of My Favorite Riff in All Rock Music. But like the song it's actually about America. But like America, it's actually about me.
Every story is a love story. Especially the stories that want you to think that they’re more important than love stories. In my life, the love story between me and America has always been the most turbulent.
I was born to be a true believer in the American dream. I was born as a masc-appearing white person in the middle of the Midwest with a decent amount of creativity, extreme perfectionism, a proclivity to tragedy, eternal optimism, and an extreme confidence in my own uniqueness. America and I were made for each other.
What’s more, I was born during the Clinton years, raised in that brief window of time when neoliberalism seemed poised to bring us into the Promised Land. Those who can’t remember anything before 9/11 cannot possibly understand this feeling. There was a pocket of time when cynicism, anxiety, and conspiracy were not in vogue. The dominant feeling (if you were white and economically privileged) was that everything would get better forever. That was the mood I spent my first eight years absorbing into my body, mind, and soul.
And so when PBS started broadcasting Liberty’s Kids, I feel into a deep, passionate, committed love affair with America. The ideals of American ingenuity, industry, innovation, and world-shaping power became my ideals. I was obsessed with the American Revolution and fascinated by the Civil War—fixated by America’s constant capacity to progressively solve the world’s problems with might and right.
Even as I grew older, bearing the scars of a generation wounded by 9/11 and the jingoistic culture that poisoned patriotism, I saw my generation as the fulfillment of the American Dream. We Millennials, raised in the All-American values of protest, resistance, and rebellion, would use our vast resources of wealth, knowledge, and wisdom to save the world from its sins and from our sins. In our generation, we would accomplish the American Dream of redeeming the world our image. We would make America God.
If this sounds melodramatic, it is. But it is what I believed. I dreamt of conquest because was the allure America offered. If I followed the siren song of its promise of power, I could use my gifts to save the world. I studied literature in college—specifically American literature—for this purpose. By learning from the voices of the past, I would play my part in writing a vision for America’s glorious and imminent future.
Of course it was a lie. All relationships built upon an imbalance of power are filled with lies. But can you blame me? America was so big and I was regularly made to feel so small. As early onsets of my queerness came out beyond my control I could see how much America loved to put me into danger. It thrived on my scarcity and terror. And yet, it regularly reminded me that I wouldn’t be safe to be myself anywhere else in the world. So I had no choice but to stay with America.
All relationships with institutions telling you that they are more important than love are ripe with abuse. Love is the most important thing in the world. There is no narrative, god, government, or institution more important than love. But in our modern world, pretty much every narrative, god, government, or institution seeks to convince us that they are more important than love. That love is the side narrative, and only they can give our lives true purpose.
If you can, do not believe them. This will be difficult. American society conditions us to trust these sources. American society sets us up for heartbreak so that we may be captive to abusive systems, making us all the easier to abuse in other ways.
So after my second year of college I had taken four semesters of a progressive course called American Conversations. Using the New Historicist approach, this course had us study a variety of American literature, documents, films, photographs, and other primary sources to make us understand the complexity of American identity. The course introduced me to the idea that there are multiple competing American identities, and the dominant American identity thrives upon erasing complexity. This course made me doubt America for the first time.
And after my second year of college I worked at a Lutheran summer camp where, in contrast to my first summer there, I threw myself entirely into the community of counselors. Despite being in a relationship with a college girlfriend that I thought was going well (but boy howdy was I wrong), I found myself falling in love with counselors of various genders and I didn’t know what to do about it. And so I did nothing. But it was terrifying. My latent bisexual teenage angst was emerging at last, and for the first time I had to question what kind of love I truly wanted for myself. This experience made me doubt myself and my way of loving for the first time.
This was the summer of 2013. So one Saturday afternoon while I was waiting for my laundry to finish drying I entered a Caribou Coffee and listened to the new Vampire Weekend album, Modern Vampires of the City, while drinking a dark hot chocolate. I tried to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I was soon distracted by the frenetic music of faith and identity ringing in my ears.
And then “Hannah Hunt” began playing.
Have you ever had a song that you felt was written just for you? I’ve had plenty of songs that I have loved with a deep, abiding love because they see into my soul. But only “Hannah Hunt” feels like it was written specifically for me.
It opens with a soft atmosphere of echoing bass strokes, chiming piano chords, ocean noises, and lilting vocals with cryptic lyrics about the narrator and their companion witnessing moving plants while traveling across America.
A reverb-heavy wobbling guitar accompanies the second verse as the narrator now brings faith into the question, expressing confidence that their companion, Hannah Hunt, is the sole omnipresent force in the world. They continue moving through America as the narrator has confirmed that their love story is one of faith. Hannah is not just a human, they are a concept, an institution—something both intimate and more vast and powerful than our narrator.
The first expression of the chorus settles us into this strange, timeless world in which the narrator and their beloved live. Their life is measured by the “US Dollar,” but they operate on their “own sense of time.” Do you see what’s going on here? The constant association of Hannah Hunt, America, and God and then the blurring of all those lines? The traveling across the country searching for something indeterminate yet essential? The tragedy of no boundaries and too many expectations?
The third verse brings the coasts together, as they burn the New York Times to survive the bizarre cold of Santa Barbara. Grief makes its first appearance as Hannah emotes for the only time in the entire song, crying among the apocalyptic frozen beaches of SoCal. We also see the contrast in problem-solving. Our hopeful, pragmatic narrator goes to buy kindling to build a fire. Hannah only consumes, tearing up the news for warmth.
Then comes the full chorus:
“If I can't trust you, then damn it, Hannah
There's no future, there's no answer
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me, we got our own sense of time”
Do you see it? Do you see it?!?!? On one hand its a love story between two people failing to change for one another, whose lack of trust robs them of their future. It’s the story of an inherently abusive relationship where one person holds their partner so high above themselves that they regularly sacrifice their humanity for their happiness, and the other person is all too ready to receive that sacrifice.
But it’s also about something bigger. The constant allusions to America (the place) and America (the concept) reveal an anxiety with a bigger, all-consuming relationship—the love between citizen and country that is inherently one-sided. The narrator wants a future, but also realizes that their relationship has their own sense of time. There is no room for trust because “Hannah”—the person and the concept—cannot trust the narrator. Individuals seek America but America never seeks us. It only uses us before discarding us when it no longer needs us. There’s no future or answer in a relationship with America, because America is not concerned with futures or answers. It is only ever concerned with its present—with the US dollar. But to realize that the relationship with our country never meant anything at all calls our entire selves into question. If we can’t trust the country to whom we’ve given our identity, our purpose, and our faith, how can we ever trust ourselves again? We can’t.
Then comes my favorite riff in rock history.
I can’t describe it. You just have to listen to it. I also can’t explain why it’s my favorite riff. I’ve been trying for ten years, and I have never succeeded. Maybe it doesn’t work for anyone else, but it’s perfect to me. Maybe it’s because it’s played on a piano. Maybe it’s because I left the coffee shop as soon as my laundry was done to find a piano on which to learn the riff. Maybe it’s because it’s a beautifully constructed descending melody in an unconventional chord structure that evokes the deep pain that comes from the first realization that a relationship is fundamentally broken and will never heal and you will never fully heal from being in such a relationship.
But now, twelve years later, with seven years of therapy, I think I have the words to describe the feeling at the heart of why I love this riff.
The piano riff in “Hannah Hunt” is grief. And grief is as un-American as an emotion can be.
The piano riff in “Hannah Hunt” is the kind of grief that is a resignation, a surrender, to the inherent sadness of the world in which sincere and optimistic people are manipulated by their country and by people around them. The kind of grief that comes from realizing that everything is broken; that idealism only leads to pain and abuse. The kind of grief that comes from discovering that love leads as far away from perfection as possible. The kind of grief that comes from confronting the reality that life is sadness and heartbreak and loss and nothing, no-one, and certainly no concept can save you from the inevitability of death and having to decide between the willfull ignorance of denial or the crushing loneliness of rejecting relationships that promise to protect you.
The piano riff is brief. It only repeats twice and then fades away. It feels like a fleeting thought. A realization so powerful and painful that it has to be shut out of the mind to protect oneself from the potential devastation it portends. The anxious human mind cannot grapple with the reality that every part of life is filled with brokenness and death and not with triumph and security.
Sure enough, the narrator tries to deflect from the realization of the piano riff by screaming the final half of the chorus again at the top of the vocal register. It sounds like an effort to distract or displace the pain of discovery—an attempt to make the problem “Hannah’s” rather than the narrator. But the brutal reality is that the problem doesn’t depend upon Hannah or America. It only belongs to the narrator. Institutions are built to be insulated from an obligation to individuals, while individuals are made to feel impossibly dependent upon institutions (and that institutions are dependent upon their sacrifice).
Hannah does not care about the narrator in this song. Hannah does not care that they are going through an existential crisis of faith and trust that is making them question their very existence. Hannah does not need to care. Hannah only consumes.
America does not care about you. America does not care that we are all going through an existential crisis of faith and trust that is making us question our very existence. America does not need to care. America only consumes.
The piano riff doesn’t return as the song fades out, but its presence lingers like a ghost over the ambient ending. The reverb laden piano plays a few chords to close the track, before suddenly fading away. One can only contemplate devastation for so long.
But the piano riff wouldn’t leave me alone after I heard it. I listened to the rest of the album having realized how my crumbling relationship with America was at the center of so many of my other fracturing relationships. As I drove back to camp, I believe that I realized for the first time that all of the relationships in my life were poised to become significantly more painful if I continued down the path I was following by rejecting America. I believe that I realized that my college relationship was doomed for destruction that day. I believe that I realized that my relationships with my home, my family, and my church were going to become a lot more complicated that day.
“Hannah Hunt” perfectly illustrated my doubts and devastation, but also my weakness. Having spent years of sacrificing myself for the concept of America in all of my relationships, I was ready to reclaim myself. But to reclaim myself I would have to put every relationship I had into jeopardy. And I didn’t know what was one the other side of that decision. The grief was paralyzing, and faced with the decision between denial and destruction I found that I was incapable of making any decision.
So I found a piano back at camp and learned the piano riff to “Hannah Hunt.” I played it repeatedly for what felt like ten minutes. Then I learned the whole song so I could put the riff into its place as the climax of the song. For the rest of the summer I would show people the riff whenever I could in a desperate call for help. Every time I played it I was filled with the deep desire to cry in the most uncontrollable of ways. It was the impulse to return to the age of four when I could emote without judgment and people would leave me alone. Sometimes I did cry. Sometimes I didn’t. I never found the courage to completely break down, though. I wouldn’t for another two years until I was backed against the wall by allowing a relationship built upon “all-or-nothing” expectations to drive me to the point of questioning my right to exist. I am grateful for the piano riff in “Hannah Hunt” (and Sufjan Steven’s Carrie and Lowell) for being my companions as I made the decision to exist as myself in opposition to all the “all-or-nothing” relationships in my life.
The problem with being a True Believer in America is that you allow your relationship with America to corrupt every relationship in your life. Just as the narrator of “Hannah Hunt” allowed America to determine their relationship with Hannah, I allowed America to determine my relationship with my family, friends, education, God, church, Earth, everything. And America’s standards were the same for every relationship:
America First
Everyone Else Second
Me Last
The people who accept America’s terms and allow them to guide their relationships are literally killing the planet and everyone on it. America First is an ideology of death that fundamentally rejects the worthiness of the human person. It is unsustainable with life on Earth.
But make no mistake, they aren’t the root of the problem. The root is America itself. America itself is an abusive partner who seeks to eradicate you and everything in its path while presenting itself as the protective provider. That is the realization of the piano riff in “Hannah Hunt.” America has ruined it all and acting upon that realization will only make things worse but needs to be done to live. The riff was the first time I heard that realization emoted, and my words don’t do it justice. The cultural upheaval after George Floyd’s murder was the second time I heard it emoted. I’m trying my best to emote it now through my words and tendency to over-explain because I think the feelings of the piano riff from “Hannah Hunt” need to be spread and spoken and sung as loudly as possible because America is about to destroy the world.
Because even more than the America First ideology, it is us well-meaning True Believers in America that bear the most responsibility for the state that we are in. America doesn’t desire drones and followers, it desires people who believe that they can be equal partners with America. Those are the people who will sustain America and allow America’s cancer to infect the relationships of entire communities. It’s those of us who want to live for others that enable America to exploit the world because it is near impossible for us to act selfishly and even with healthy self-centeredness. We are America’s enablers. We are the ones responsible for the state of the world. Those of us who wholeheartedly live on the US dollar are the ones allowing America' to destroy the world.
But it’s not our fault. Victims of abuse are never responsible for the actions of their abuser. It’s remarkably hard to leave an abusive relationship once it’s got its claws in you, especially when the alternative is just as devastating as the present reality. That’s the grief of the piano riff in “Hannah Hunt.” There is no greener grass. When America has influenced every relationship, rejecting America means potentially destroying these relationships when people choose America over you as many are poised to do. And yet to remain with America is to face the death of the self. We true believers are victims just as much as anyone else. The piano riff sings of inevitable, forever victimhood. And for people who are conditioned to see themselves as powerful, few things are as devastating as admitting that we are victims.
The piano riff in “Hannah Hunt” enters into my life whenever I am working to end my relationship with America in a dominant relationship in my life. It entered into my life when I ended my relationship with my college relationship, and it allowed me to feel the extremities of my emotions to sustain me through all that America stole from me. It reentered in 2018 when I finally realized that there was no political salvation for America after two years of trying to save it from Trump. It reentered again in 2020 when I came out—dismantling America’s grip on my relationship with myself.
And it’s reentered recently as I have begun deconstructing America’s influence upon my relationship with the institutional church. My spouse and I are about to have a child. We are allowing a new love to enter into our lives and break us open. It makes me feel more vulnerable and afraid than anything before in my life. And after three years of working in the church, I know that I have to choose myself—and by extension my child—before the institution. This fills me with the paralyzing preemptive grief of fearing that many relationships I have formed with the institutional church from my childhood are going to be destroyed beyond repair. Some already have. Pastors who do not live in gestational bodies are not supposed to leave their calls to raise children. But I know that nothing about America or the church or any aspect of my faith and living is more important than my child. And I am living into the weirdness of setting a boundary between me and the church (and the America the church unfortunately represents), hoping that it will be respected. We’ll see what happens. I have already felt my relationship with the church institution change even as people within the church have been fantastically supportive. That’s the terror of American institutions. The most well-intentioned and kind and loving people cannot protect you from the cruel indifference of an American ideology that demands to be above everything in your life. “If I can’t trust you then damn it, Hannah, there’s no future, there’s no answer.”
Yet I always return to the hope that came out of the grief I first felt when hearing the piano riff in “Hannah Hunt.” For it wasn’t just grief that compelled me to learn and play the riff with an obsession I’ve never had with any other piece of music. It was the hope that came out of the full expression of grief—the hope of knowing that I was worth destroying every relationship that America had corrupted. I was worth prioritizing over America. I am more important than America. And so are you. I will be telling that to my child every day. Not exactly in those words, but in the sentiment to relentless hope that there is a better way to exist.
Ten years ago I started believing that I am more important than America, and that I am more than my relationships governed by America. There is a distinct difference in the relationships I have formed and cultivated after 2013, even more so after 2018 and more still after 2020. It will likely change even more after the birth of my child.
I cultivate fewer relationships now than I did prior to 2013, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Every relationship I cultivate is done with the intention of keeping America out of the relationship. Every relationship I cultivate is done with the intention of receiving and treating the other as a full, worthy, independent human person and not as a symbol, concept, or expectation. This is challenging, and I doubt that I can handle more than 10 close relationships of that kind. Especially as I prioritize developing an anti-American relationship with my child and spouse.
I’m not oblivious. I know that I will be deconstructing my relationship with America for the rest of my life. It has infested all of the relationships of my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. It has likely influenced my later relationships in ways I cannot comprehend. It will likely influence my child in much the same way.
But every time that I listen to the piano riff from “Hannah Hunt,” and even more when I play it, I am reminded of the hope that comes out of the fullness of grief. America, like all abusers, can be resisted and can be escaped. The pain is devastating, but the hope that emerges from that pain is worthwhile. It helps to have people move you out of the relationship with America and through the grief that follows. But even on your own, it is always possible and worthwhile. Life and all the grief that goes into and comes out of living is worthwhile.
I am thankful to “Hannah Hunt” and the members of Vampire Weekend for being the person/song that first moved me through that grief to see the hope that comes from realizing that I am worth more than America. I am worth more than the relationships that cause me to erase my self. I am worthwhile even if the purpose of my life is simply to feel the fullness of grief, process it, move on, and hope that the next generation finds it easier to believe that they are worthwhile without qualification.
And by the way, you are worthwhile too.
[cue piano riff from “Hannah Hunt” for dramatic outro even though this is a blog post]