Unicorn Tolerance[1]
Lyrics
Drawn to the dark
Covered by the blood[2]
when possible
Called to the corners[3]
To any open crucible
Easy to reach
Bearing every mark unmissably[4]
Want to leave behind some token of what I carried with me
Search in the storm drains
Sleep in the underpasses
Try hard to look hard
Behind my blackout sunglasses[5]
But I have high unicorn tolerance
I have high unicorn tolerance
I have high unicorn tolerance
I have high unicorn tolerance
Swim with real sharks
Those who never speak when spoken to
Hard limits fade into memory
Once broken through
Scaling the well[6]
Every single day instinctively
Feel shame, real shame
For what my friends must think of me
Dig through the graveyard
Rub the bones against my face
It gets real nice around the graveyard
Once you've acquired the taste
And when the clouds do clear away
Get a momentary chance to see
The thing I've been trying to beat to death
The soft creature that I used to be
The better animal I used to be
Draw where I'm drawn
Seldom wonder why, just follow you[7]
Never blame the rags that swaddled me[8]
For the place the river took me to
Long life to the spiders!
Safe travels to the crow!
Love to the ghosts
Who taught me everything I know
But I have high unicorn tolerance
I have high unicorn tolerance
But I have high unicorn tolerance
I have high unicorn tolerance
Banter
- In the fifth grade, our teacher Debbie Bessel - we knew her first name, because we were California elementary school students. So we would sometimes refer to our elementary school teachers by their first names. It is a forgotten age, I think, though, if you send your kids to a Quaker school, they might do some of that. [off mic looking for something] If you have listened to the new Mountain Goats album Goths, you may have noticed that the songs have an ungodly amount of chords in them. If you're writing a 1995 Mountain Goats song, it takes you about 5 minutes to learn how to play that one. The new ones are gonna take about two tours. So I was in the fifth grade, right, and our teacher told us that we were to write a report. I love this concept. I'm not sure what that's supposed to prepare you for in life. Writing a report. It's not...it's not...a business report. It's writing about something you feel passionate about that you that want to share with other people. I'm not sure that the rest of the world after elementary school encourages you to actually do that. But...but so I mean...I remember going, 'Aww man, I'm going to write about dragons.' Cause I was a young man who loved dragons. And unicorns. That's right. Magical and mystical things. But I had a lot of experiences as I went along through late childhood and adolescence that sort of...hardened my skin a little...and put a crust around my heart. So when a girlfriend of mine, one of the sweetest people I'd ever known, gave me a coffee cup with a unicorn on it as like the first present that we had exchanged, my eighteen year old self looked at it like, 'I used to like that stuff as a kid.' And immediately, the voice of my younger, truer self convicted me and said, "Have you betrayed the noble unicorn? Who sought only the best for you? Who wronged you in no way? Whose innocence you have turned your back on?' But I had not entirely, and I drank from that coffee cup until it broke. This is called 'Unicorn Tolerance.' (2017-06-01 The Fillmore)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. Unicorns in mythology are immune to poison and/or grant the person who drinks their blood/uses their parts somehow immunity to poison.↩
2. Evangelical phrase meaning one who is saved by Jesus; also the title of a 1904 Christian hymn.↩
3. “Calling the corners” is a Wiccan ritual that invokes the cardinal directions to open a ritual or spellwork. ↩
4. See Galatians 6:17 (“From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus”), which is, according to some schools of thought, about circumcision. I'm pretty sure that this is not the Mountain Goats song about circumcision, rather, it's a metaphor. ↩
5. Referenced in banter as a staple of goth style that JD employed growing up. ↩
6. Scaling is buildup of minerals in a well-pipe that eventually may make the well useless. ↩
7. The "you" here is God, per authorial intent. "There are two songs, “Unicorn Tolerance” and “Wear Black,” with “you,” the second person or addressee, where I went back and forth on whether to capitalize the “Y” or not. If I didn’t capitalize the “Y” it’s only because I wanted people to figure it out, right? I don’t like to telegraph my punches." (2017 interview)↩
8. See Exodus 2:5-7, in which the river takes Moses, swaddled in rags, to Pharaoh's daughter.↩