Meet Me in the Middle: a Midwest Playlisticle
A brief-ish inventory of Missourian mentalities through trademarked 'cool girl music.'
I was born, like my parents and their parents before them, in the state of Missouri. I mean the state of Missouri in as much a “state of mind” sense as I do a physical location— there’s a mindset that possesses each resident of the “Show Me State,” a mindset of the Midwest in general. Not a superiority complex, or a landlocked-spin on coastal elitism, rather the result of a state so aware of its own overall irrelevance. Missouri finds happiness in mattering exclusively to its people, even if just a fraction of them. I have never really belonged to that subsect.
I like to think I don’t look like I’m from where I am, be it the suburbs or a state that’s landlocked2. I stick out like a sore thumb in my suburban town, with tattoos outside of the American traditional style, multi-hued/heavily-shadowed eyelids, a funky skirt here and there that is long, but possibly features a revealing slit down the side. And I’m proud of that, I savor the looks of shock I receive upon my answer to “Where are you from?”. I spent all of my eighteen years living there clawing my route to escape, savoring the minutes and moments I would spend out of town.
After a year or so in Boston, Massachusetts, spent hearing pretty copious amounts of shit about coming from nowhere (“that’s flyover country!”), I began to feel a pang of pride in where I was born and raised. I didn’t despise the parts I loathed any less, I still would much rather spend my days in a liberal city than a cop-kissing copy-and-paste suburb. The sentiment occupies an expanse of grey space, not quite missing nor a gravitation, but a stamp that I feel no need to scrub off. I feel it most when I listen to select songs, my mixtape conjuring my slice of Missouri.
Thus, I present to you meet me in the middle.
“Heart of the Country,” Paul McCartney (alternatively, “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” John Denver)
My dad grew up on a farm in the rural town (referred to as a village by Google) of Truxton, Missouri. There is one Walmart, and excursions there are treated as an Occasion. They grew wheat and corn, I think, and kept a horse, a pony, a decent chunk of goats, a couple of llamas, and the stray cat here and there. Inside the house was an enormous (despite spending long stretches of time roaming the woods) cat, sometimes a dog that was apparently part coyote, and a raccoon. The raccoon’s name was Bandit and she lived in the basement (the entire floor). When my brother and I visited we were not allowed in “Bandit’s room,” as we would suffer a solid mauling. I refer to Bandit in the past tense, as she died about a decade ago, and now inhabits that great basement in the sky. I feel as though I’ve justly set the scene.
My dad used to watch a lot of scary movies when he was a preteen, campy flicks from the seventies and eighties. His stepdad did not like that, thought it was very silly, if not stupid, to make yourself afraid of things in the name of fun. Thus, a deal was made. My father could continue to treat himself to a thriller here or there, if he was willing to wander around the woods at night with just the dog for company.
I used to love visiting the family farm. I was the first grandchild, the only granddaughter on that side of the family, although I’m somewhat sure I’ve since been disowned for something or another (it’s either the queerness, the protesting, or my city-girl lifestyle— truly a toss-up), so I was treated like a true Midwest Princess. I had my own room, obviously painted pink, adorned with framed High School Musical 2 posters (the three boys split a room, and had Justice League DVDs as opposed to the Barbie ones that stocked my shelves). I named nearly every animal that populated the place: the llamas were Cinderella and Jasmine, I’m pretty sure there was both a Troy and a Gabriella among the goats, and my awful memory has spared me from listing the rest. I ate freezer pops that sweat beside me under the Truxton sun, and took home hardened kernels of corn in styrofoam cups to bestow upon my mother. I watched from the window as Bandit and my grandma swing on the back porch at dusk, two gals old in their age yet full of gusto.
This sect of Missouri, at least to me, screams McCartney’s Ram, but that may just be because I’m always listening for it. The last time I drove with my dad I asked him to queue up Denver’s ditty. He told me that he and my uncle used to play that song in their rural past life. I can visualize it so clearly that it deserves an honorable mention.
“Candleflame,” Adrianne Lenker
My mother was reared up in a vastly different section of the same state. St. Charles was a step further than a life sentence town, it held entire lineages hostage. We ended up living a cool twenty-five minutes away from the house she grew up in, maybe twenty from the church she attended for a couple of decades. She, as well as my grandparents and I’m assuming their grandparents before them, were Baptist Christians. Not Lutherans, not Methodists, and thank God not Catholics (I remember a younger me booing at the Catholic Church when we drove past, and cannot conjure up a reason why). I appreciate the priority of familial proximity, I’ve always enjoyed visits to my mom’s parents, family gatherings turned events with twenty or so people in attendance. My mom used to drop my brother and I off at their house before church, since they lived conveniently close by, and my Grandma would make ham and bean soup with cornbread.
The expected response to the question “what religion do you practice?” back home is a sect of Christianity, your nonsecular breed. It is a decidedly non diverse area, with the prominent “minority religion” being Mormonism, or maybe Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was enrolled by my babysitter into a children’s program at a Bible church, which is an incredibly redundant way of saying borderline evangelical. It was in the basement of this church that I had my first kiss with my childhood best friend and said babysitter’s daughter. I did not see this as a sign to be perhaps a bit more critical when they taught us things like the sanctity of marriage. I was just one loving woman, and hey, isn’t that a solid interpretation of the New Testament?
If you are not Christian in Missouri, you may notice that, after attempting to recruit you to their churches, people will Talk. I think the Midwestern people are more forgiving towards bad Christians than those who simply do not practice. Not interested in talking religion, politics, or money at the dinner table? Probably should scoot over to the kids’ table then, though I can’t guarantee your safety there either.
I would describe my religious affiliation as Candleflame-esque, sensitive to spiritual sensations without a real rigidity to my doctrine. I pray if I’m moved. I am often moved on airplanes, when close relatives are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, and when wide awake in my teal painted childhood bedroom past two in the morning. I am rarely moved by megachurches and alt-rock odes to Jesus, which seems to be the only thing one can find in Missouri. Seeing my old school chums depart on their mission trips, the mission being to take cute photos with impoverished children and provide resources with a hidden price tag, I astoundingly am moved further away. I am the queer little girl bestowing the most amorous of kisses in the place that taught me what it is to hate.
“Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell
I grew up in a cookie-cutter suburb, the kind where you know before even entering your neighbor’s house that the layout will be identical to your own. If I drive ten minutes south of my driveway, I reach rural mutterings, and can usually spot a couple of horses, a teacup farm, and the odd armadillo. On my drive to middle school my dad would always point out the deer grazing in the morning mist, auburn blobs in an expanse of gray, green, and brown. Around my junior year of high school those trees were leveled, that field filled in, and a new suburb was copy and pasted in its place, sufficiently blocking off the space immediately outside of our local nature reserve to native animals. I thought I was driving home the wrong way as I passed it, the earthy palette reduced to a sickly yellow.
This pattern pops up around every corner of the city. The St. Louis Post Dispatch affectionately referred to it as Westward Expansion, an odd choice for an endearing term in the present day. An old farm scrapped in favor of a combo chain pizzeria and a bakery less than a two minute walk away from another bakery. Highways raised in favor of five minutes gained in the morning, two swimming schools in a two mile radius (as if undisciplined dips into Lake St. Louis are the biggest issue we currently face). Strip mall after strip mall lining the streets, chunky tan plaster masses.
Apparently this is all necessary because people keep migrating to our specific city, hailed for its above average public school system and the family-centered community experience. Come one, come all to the manmade green space and the manufactured ponds. Not only will the kids playact, you too can participate in the Great American Roleplay!
If I’m at all insinuating that “back in my day Missouri was a haven,” allow me to stomp on that notion. It is a parking lot palace. I learned to drive in parking lots. I have had sex ranging from mediocre overall to just a little cramped in parking lots. This was never a nation that considered nature its equal, and what they paved is not what Joni Mitchell would likely dub paradise. But the “that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” lyric hits smack in the center of my nose. The parking lots have usurped us.
“A Change Would Do You Good,” Sheryl Crow
Singer-Songwriter-ApparentlyActress Sheryl Crow grew up in the bootheel of Missouri, where they actually pronounce it “Missour-uh.” She lived there throughout elementary, middle, and high school, before moving further inward to attend the University of Missouri, affectionately known as Mizzou. She graduated about a decade before my mother would at the same school. She was a sorority girl (like my mother) and an orientation leader (like myself). A quintessential Missouri girl. She has a star on our walk of fame— located in the Delmar Loop in University City, the only walkable section of St. Louis.
Sheryl Crow is one of a dozen or so relatively well known people from Missouri, and thus was a popular pick for the fourth grade’s Famous Missourian Project at my elementary school. To rattle off a few others: Jon Hamm, Brad Pitt, Mark Twain, Walt Disney, and Laura Ingels Wilder. I shed tears when I could not complete mine on “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” (Kathy Bates’ character in the hit film Titanic and real life tragedy survivor) due to another girl snatching her up before I had the chance. I instead chose the local on-camera meteorologist, Cindy Presler, who resided in the same condo complex as my grandparents, and was therefore reachable by phone. I was so starstruck during the interview that I completely blacked out. My parents, well aware of their daughter’s “extreme sensitivity,” saw this coming— my dad sat beside me through it all, working as a scribe so that my report could be completed. It was still missing vital information, like my subject’s date of birth (“A lady never reveals her age!” Ms. Presler quickly shut down that line of questioning).
This is undoubtedly the coolest song I can envision being concocted with Missouri in mind. As a fellow escapee, I can only imagine this is an inner monologue of the past finally being verbalized, set to music even. It is our advice to dreamers forced to bud in the same rocky soil: reaching greener grass requires steps being taken. Catch that train and fling away your phone, really, it’s for the better.
Side note— I am so aware that the intended meaning of this specific song has so much more to do with outrunning an addiction than skipping town. But a sixteen-year-old me did not understand that “chasing dragons” referred to shooting up and the “plastic swords” were really syringes, and she will not be drowned out.
“400 Lux,” Lorde
Fast forward almost all of adolescence, as there’s nothing uniquely hellish about Midwestern middle schools (only because the knob refuses to turn any further, maximum repulsion has already been reached within those walls). Instead, skip straight to the teen years.
Activities for the fun-loving teenager in Missouri have been left quite limited, but there is one that has stood the test of time— driving around. This can be done solo, with a partner, or even with an entire crew for the ambitious driver. Properly performed, there is no set destination (perhaps a couple of points you’d like to hit on your route, but the constant motion is required). This frightens most parents, as their primary means of socialization was getting shit-faced in an open plain, and they expect equally outrageous behavior from the subsequent generation. The only victim of this behavior is the environment. Save the planet, move to a city and walk aimlessly instead.
Driving is inherently terrifying, I think. You are operating a vehicle that wields the power of life or death, and weighs more than anything you’ve imagined lifting (this is difficult to process, as I’ve lifted a very heavy couch and cannot visualize something more physically draining than that). Driving in a city is even worse (city planners the geniuses that you are, you’ve gamed it!), because the streets are not only unfamiliar, they’re densely packed, and pedestrians have a sense of confidence and safety that is snipped out in the suburbs.
Hometown cruising is removed from that entirely. You’ve studied these seats from the backseat for a decade, the passenger seat for a handful of years, the scenes of these streets play on the backs of your eyelids as you chase sleep. It is more effective than any anti-anxiety medication I’ve been prescribed (a whopping four, which makes me feel qualified to endorse this as the most effective method of relief). It’s the euphoria that results from following routine, it is the smack of success when you discover a road not yet revealed to you yet ripe with a sense of familiarity. “These roads where the houses don’t change” function as a safety blanket, squeezed more tightly to your chest with each press of the pedal.
“She’s Leaving Home,” The Beatles
The result of chasing the aforementioned change.
Most born Missourians, at least in a forty mile radius of the Winghaven Country Club, do not plant their roots elsewhere. They are happy in this state, and there is nothing wrong with that. In all honesty, I think people who stay will always be a bit critical of those who leave, and the same goes for those who leave questioning those who stay. Our ideologies appear incompatible. You either play the role of the parent in this narrative tune, or the freedom seeking daughter.
My mom always rooted for me to venture out. That sounds like she was trying to get rid of me, which I’m confident she wasn’t, but I think it’s funny to insinuate I am not her darlingest daughter (also her favorite daughter and her only daughter). I simply told her I had big dreams one day back when my baby teeth had yet to fall out, and she just as easily decided that I was doing something right. My dad wasn’t not supportive, just noticeably less active in the act. It was more the outsider eye I feared— cousins that figured my Familial Hate manifested in my move to the American Northeast, random onlookers watching me return to college after my mother’s cancer diagnosis with squished faces.
It was because I left home that I was able to defend the aforementioned daughter, the titular she, in a debate against the critic I just can’t seem to stop gushing about, Rob Sheffield. In his book Dreaming the Beatles (I feel so affectionately towards this piece of writing that I have mentioned it in half of the articles populating this Substack) he dubs this ever-dear-ditty a miss, a lackluster dud in The Beatles’ discography. Reading this, I became Caesar freshly stabbed by Brutus— et tu, Paul preferee? Thanks to Tim Riley, a favorite professor of mine (also a Beatles critic, but a Lennon fan, so we joust), I was able to confront Sheffield with my contention via Zoom in a classroom setting. I was not responsible for turning him on to this track, as he’d heard a simply life changing spoken word cover by Patti Smith some time prior. Yet we still butt heads when discussing the main conflict within the song. I cited Paul’s portion of the final chorus with stubborn resolve— “She is having fun. Something inside that was always denied!”— and yet he is still firmly sat on the parents’ side of the bench. This has made me seriously doubt the sufficiency of Emerson College’s Pre-Law minor.
“California,” Chappell Roan
Chappell Roan holds the deed to a sizable chunk of my Missouri Girl Heart. She was born and raised in a small town outside of the city my dad went to college in. She is unabashedly queer, embracing a level of tacky that transcends beyond camp to inhabit a burlesque-esque-cunt world uniquely her own. If she had been as dominant on the scene when I was first starting school in Boston I am absolutely certain that I wouldn’t have always skirted around the topic of hometowns, or always followed up the Missouri Confession with a joke. This sounds dramatic, so I’m itching to contextualize with an anecdote.
At the start of my collegiate sophomore year I was taking my first Serious Journalism Course with a professor that I’d really taken up respect for. He was funny, easy to trail off on some 70’s journalist tangent about chain smoking cigs in the newsroom, and really knowledgeable when it came to the subject matter. I’d mentioned being from Missouri several times (I occasionally sat next to a girl from the neighboring state of Nebraska, and spotting someone else from the Midwest at our pretentious school feels like sighting a koala in Iowa), so it made sense when he brought up his sister’s recent Missouri excursion.
It was to Branson. Personally, I love Branson. It’s a tourist city, with a target audience apparently made up exclusively of Missourians, and I believe this disqualifies the use of the word tourist. To a twelve year old Brooke (that is me) it was the Chappell Roan of Missouri cities. There was an amusement park made up of rickety roller coasters that reached almost-nearly-record-breaking speeds and a large kid’s park that was a genuine utopia in my child brain (I journaled about it. I dreamt about it, semi lucid adventures through this playground of massive proportions). Other attractions included a wax museum, a mirror maze, and a 4D “roller coaster” (a shaking pew in a bite-sized B-grade IMAX).
Essentially, a wonderful place full of light and love and dreams. So I smiled and nodded in response to my teacher's comment. Picture Bambi’s mom being shot. That was me when he then said something along the lines of “The restaurant she went to had plastic menus. They couldn’t afford to have paper!”.
That was just odd and awkward and that I didn’t really like his class anymore cause it’s like what the hell, man.
Right now this MostlyMidwest girl is on a train, running on a rail that is objectively inferior to the northeast, but who’s really being picky. I can’t currently relate to the lyric “I miss the seasons in Missouri,” at the moment, as I’ve been living in Chicago. Chicago is Midwestern-adjacent. It is decidedly more grand than the rest of the Midwest, definitely more of a destination than my birthplace of St. Louis— St. Louis is the ugly duckling to Chicago’s golden goose. But it does share those same harsh, borderline violent climate conditions, the weather that shifts on whims.
I am instead actively missing my dog with cuntish tendencies, the car that I’m not sure will be waiting for me upon my return, a family dinner (this is up in the air as my younger brother is working but rumor has it he’s excited for me to be in town), and the hour that it will take my mom and I to decide on a movie.