College, senior year. I discovered Sing the Greys and then, more importantly for me, The Midnight Organ Fight.  Unpolished, honest, and almost painfully direct; Scott Hutchison sang songs that felt familiar, those yawn-deep voids of depression, the jittery stumble-steps of anxiety.  And the flickering joy, the emphasis that, even if everything isn’t alright, maybe it will be.  Every terrifying and terrified emotion identified and recognized, acknowledged as nothing more than temporary. Scott offered hope in the darkness, or at least an intangible friendship, a parallel narrative of how to navigate the greys and blacks, to see the shades of color in the living.

            Frightened Rabbit always struck me as the most appropriate name for the band. To hop across the meadows, frenetic and fluffy, experiencing life’s wild pleasures of constant food and sex, but always predators could float or dart into your life from any angle. Tense, but living.  Afraid, but certainly alive. Not a predator, but prey.

            As a writer, Scott delved into the deepest of human abysses, mining alone in the darkness to bring a few jagged stones to the surface. And when he held those stones aloft, hand in the air, he became a beacon.  The band around him buoyed the songs with an almost-lighthearted sound, rendering the anxiety and depression into something lesser and different. Scott nearly always added flickers of light to the songs, and maybe everything. 

            “Hug your loved ones,” he messaged at the end, even as the dark river swirled over him.  Even then, slivers of light for the rest of us. 

            The Midnight Organ Fight carried me through some private shadows, songs for my headphones. Every year, like clockwork, a few months barely pass; I stay busy, I listen to music, and I repeat different mantras; one of the mainstays is a bastardization of one of Scott’s lyrics from “I Feel Better” – “I feel worse and worse and then better and better than ever”.  What is a mantra if not a reminder?  The other one from Scott that has always stuck with me is more like a mission statement: “While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to Earth” off “Heads Roll”. 

            It’s a year now since we knew he’d died, for sure. I hadn’t listened to the records at all since then, not until this week. The Ballroom Thieves played “My Backwards Walk” as part of their set last Saturday, and it stirred me to engage with my thoughts and feelings directly. I can’t say I feel positive about it; I’ve slept worse, cried in my car, and endured all of the requisite emotional responses I’ve been avoiding.

            But the saving grace, though, is that it’s the upswinging time of year for me. And Scott gave me plenty of reasons to be hopeful, even if he lost the battle at the end. 

            Remember that we all break. 

            Remember that we all can be mended with gold.

            Remember to mine in the darkness so that you can find the light. 

            Remember that the people you love might forget their pickaxe. 

            Remember that it’s not your fault if you didn’t see it. 

            Remember that they loved you.

            Remember that you loved them.

            Remember the light.

While I wrote this, I learned that Scott’s family has started a new organization called Tiny Changes. Please, if you feel moved at all or know anyone who’s been gripped by the horrors of depression, suicide, self-harm, or any mental health crises, consider donating. 

Lead photo courtesy of Shantel Mitchell Breen.