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)
• So, as I say, Wear Black is a Portland song and so is this. Portland is a short but extremely important period in my life when my… the deal was- I’ve told this story in interviews a few times. I was into heroin, in southern California, and I had had an overdose thing where- if you know the song Mole from We Shall All Be Healed, that’s about how I woke up one morning in Pomona Valley Hospital handcuffed to the bed, right. I put the song in the second person so you wouldn’t figure out it was about me because I’m a clever guy, I have a bachelor’s degree in English and stuff. But my father, who did not have a lot of money but saved money, had a theory; it was not a good theory, as it turned out. But who am I to say what the father of an eighteen year old who has overdosed would do to try and save his son’s life? My father said, ‘I will pay you $560 a month to live anywhere in US besides southern California and go to community college for a year.’ So, I was in Portland when he made the offer and I really did not expect to live another six months anyway. I was pretty certain I was on my way out. So I said, 'Sure. Portland. Well, who gives a fuck?’ So, he set up the thing and I found an apartment and I moved up there but I was not ready… I was really unfit to live or be anyone’s friend. And I was in the process of trying to bury the good, young me who had been under assault for a little while and when you’ve been under assault for a while, there’s an unfortunate tendency you can gain to join in the spirit of your attackers. I don’t quite understand the dynamic that happens. You sort of become the person that the people who are against you are telling you you actually are down to your core. It’s ugly and hard. But my younger self, my eleven year old self, had always loved unicorns and dragons. (2017-06-02)
• On the west coast, they called it ‘death rock’. Totally better term. Except if I called my record 'Death Rockers’, none of you would even be here. So, in the rest of the world it was 'goth’, but there was this term 'death rock’ on the west coast. It was sort of- it was a little- it was more of a hesitant goth aesthetic. In places like Florida and Minnesota and London and New York, the goth would be the full on spiked hair and the lace and the crushed purple velvet and all that. Crushed purple velvet made it to the west coast pretty hardcore because of [inaudible]. But for the most part, it was a much more understanding thing. You know, like, in London, they tried to look like walking extras from Todd Browning’s '31 'Dracula’. But in Los Angeles, they just tried to look like people who hadn’t eaten for a long time; a little makeup to make your cheeks look more sunken. But the values we were cherishing and doing were maybe values that lead you down some weird paths and away from your younger passions. When I was 11, I loved unicorns and dragons. But when I was 16, those seemed too soft a passion to pursue. And when I was 18, I moved to Portland and my girlfriend, the first present she gave me was a pound of coffee and a cup with a gold unicorn on it. And my first reaction was to go, 'Oh, you know I used to be-’ and then I immediately – the way you do if you ever sneer at your inner child – immediately was convicted. I thought, 'What are you- what are you now? Where are you going? Are you coming back from that place? Or will you get lost?’ (2017-06-03)
• The main thing is that when I was ten, I was in fifth grade and we had to do reports and I had to think of something to do a report on. So, the first thing I did was dragons. [Audience cheers.] Yeah, because I’m cool. I needed to show everybody how cool I was, so I thought dragons would be a good place to start that. And after my coolness had been established, I did the next one on unicorns. At that level of cool, it’s just so scorchingly dangerous that people can’t handle it; they start to pretend that it’s not cool because they’re afraid to accept how cool unicorns really are. But here’s the thing: I really liked them. And the one thing I didn’t like about the whole unicorns is the weird virgin myth stuff. That stuff has always struck me as very bizarre and weird but I think it’s also pretty lame addition. The main thing about the unicorn is it’s this animal you never get to see but you know it exists because there’s drawings of it. So, you know it’s got to be out there but no one’s ever going to see one. I think instead of having only the virgin be able to see the unicorn, the law should be that if you see the unicorn, you die. There’s like a little fatal thing to the unicorn. But he doesn’t do it himself, it’s on you for looking. That’s the Catholic part for me. So anyway- but I was really into these unicorns and dragons and gentle things. I wanted to get into fantasy. There were new writers; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I don’t know if she wound up being anything big because she only wrote in series and I didn’t want to have to commit to reading three or five books by anybody. One was good for me. You know, I’d sit there arguing with myself about whether I was more into science-fiction or fantasy. Again, because my cool was just, at this point, radioactive. So, by the time I got to high school, the situation in my life had gotten kind of dower in a number of ways and I was reacting in the unpredictable, meltdown sort of ways that children will react to unstable environments. And one thing I was eager to do was to crush any good parts that had been in me, any vulnerable parts, any parts that were open to attack from anywhere. I wanted to be dangerous. I wanted to be a badass. I didn’t want anything to do with no unicorn. So, I did what I did. I got into music and I got into it. And the stuff that I- you know, that good [inaudible whispering]. But I get to Portland in ‘85, I’m 18 years old, I’m a trainwreck. If you stand near me, you’re going to get burned. But I met somebody who didn’t mind a little burn on her skin and for our first gift giving holiday, she sent me a pound of coffee and a cup with a gilt unicorn on it. And the unicorn looked up at me when I opened it and said, 'So what do you think? What do you think? What do you think?’ And I said, 'Oh yeah, no. I used to be into your kind of thing.’ And he said, 'Yes, you did. I knew that person. Where have you put him?’ (2017-11-08)

Live Performances

• 2017-06-01 The Fillmore

Footnotes