It’s funny how falling down an internet rabbit hole can lead you to opportunities, people, and art that will later change your life.
That’s what happened to me with the Fort Christmas 5-song EP titled Feathers, way back in 2011. I was an occasional follower of Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride, a wedding blog for “alternative” brides. They posted an engagement photoshoot of a couple, Jeremy Larson and Elsie Flannigan (now Elsie Larson!), whose quirky, Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic I was immediately intrigued by. When I googled them to find out more, I stumbled upon this blog post by their photographer, who mentioned that Jeremy – a musician, songwriter, and music producer – had released an entire album all about his relationship with Elsie. As a diehard romantic, of course I clicked the link. And I promptly fell in love.
Feathers clangs and clamors right off the top, crashing into my headphones with instantly cheery 1960s-style instrumentals (every part performed by Jeremy, by the way). The opening song, “The Leave Behind,” tells the story of Elsie and Jeremy’s maybe-first date – hanging out with friends on New Year’s Eve, feeling a connection, but not sure yet what to do about it. (I make a point to play this song every year on December 31st, if I’m near a piano or a ukulele, because it just makes me so damn happy to do so.)
Though later in the album he’ll sing about long-term love, getting engaged to Elsie, and wanting a future with her, the first track sparkles like freshly-fallen snow as Jeremy sings about what it feels like to realize you may have just met your future spouse:
Everyone’s eyes are on the TV in the room
But my eyes are fixed on you, and they don’t stray
Because I know that this is the beginning of
The best years of my life
The first years of our life
Starting now
With you and I tonight
-Fort Christmas, “The Leave Behind“
I think the main reason this album struck me as hard as it did was that I was looking for, hoping for, wishing for that kind of love at the time. I was about to graduate from high school, and my relationships during those tumultuous years tended to be brief, surface-level, and unsatisfying. As I walked out into the wider world of adulthood, I sensed there was big big love waiting for me somewhere out there – and the lyrics and guitars and jubilant drums of Feathers felt like the musical embodiment of everything my heart ached for.
I had a relationship with this album that I’ve had occasionally with other songs and albums throughout my life, one of total and complete obsession, self-soothing by repetition. Maybe it’s a bipolar thing, or maybe my brain just latches onto certain music in a way that is slightly abnormal. In any case, before too long I had Feathers playing in my ears at almost all hours of the day. I’d slip my headphones on as I walked to school; I’d transcribe the songs’ words in my school notebooks in spare moments during math class; I’d take solo lunches, leaving my friends behind so I could wander around outdoors under the guise of “getting food” while actually just feeding my brain with gorgeous melodies. I struggled to explain to everyone in my life why these 5 songs were literally all I wanted to listen to anymore (and why I had to play them on loop on the shared family computer when my mom was trying to watch Grey’s Anatomy in the next room). These songs had come to feel like an integral part of my mental and emotional functioning. They felt like food, or water, or air.
At some point I even set Feathers as my alarm, so I could be blasted awake every day not by blaring beeps but instead by Jeremy Larson’s joy. Sometimes I put it on when I went to bed at night, too – though the album made me buzz with happiness so profoundly that I often found it hard to sleep when it was playing.
It’s useless to pretend
You’re not in love with your best friend
On nights like these, it’s fairly evident
-Fort Christmas, “Story Telling”
Two or three months into this Feathers-mania, I met my first serious boyfriend. He was a mild-mannered, good-hearted, goofy nerd from OkCupid, and although I’d had severe anxiety about dating cis men until that point, he ushered me into that world with unfathomable patience and care. (He also encouraged me to start this blog and faithfully cheered me on for years after I did, but that’s another story.) I began to fall in love for the first time.
The songs of Feathers, which are largely about NRE (New Relationship Energy), were the perfect backdrop for this era in my life. It was almost like they had been written for me to listen to at this time – or, more likely, listening to them so much had ushered circumstances into my life that could readily create the same feelings I conjured in my body and brain every time I listened. For the first couple months of our relationship, I kept accidentally calling my new boyfriend “Jeremy,” which was not his name – not because I would rather have been dating Jeremy Larson (my esteem for him has always been mostly limited to musical admiration), but because over my hours and hours of looped listening, his name had crept into my head as the one most associated with crushiness, romantic excitement, and love – and that’s how my boyfriend made me feel. (I’m sure I tried to explain this at the time, and I hope he took it as a compliment!)
I survived the worst night of my life
It went long, staggering 26 years strong
And you arrived to save me, just in time
A new light, morning light, and here we are together
-Fort Christmas, “Newbie“
I think what has stuck with me most about this album is the way it showed me what I find romantic. Or maybe it helped create my sense of what is romantic. I honestly could not fathom, at age 18, that anyone would ever love me enough to, say, write and record and produce an entire album about how much they loved me. I already had inklings that this type of creative effort impressed me, turned me on, and made me swoon (the enby ex who penned me love poems in scrappy zines; the saved voicemail of a girlfriend breathily serenading me), but this album clarified for me that those wishes weren’t just fantasies. People like that really existed somewhere out there.
That first serious boyfriend was a game developer, and during our relationship, he made games for me, like little digital interactive love notes. He also sketched portraits of me, took cute photos of me, cooked me meals, and wrote me beautifully effusive messages on special occasions. His love-borne creativity may not have manifested exactly like Jeremy Larson’s did when he wrote Feathers about Elsie, but that album had broadened my romantic psyche enough that I could see these gestures for what they were: deep, devoted love.
I still listen to Feathers a fair amount. In fact, pretty much whenever it crosses my mind for any reason, I pull it up on my phone and put it on. Even just hearing those opening drum beats makes my entire body relax – because these songs remind me of a time when I believed in and wanted love more than I believed in or wanted anything. And that’s a good feeling, even 10+ years and 5+ partners later. The contours of my heart would be different today if I hadn’t clicked that fateful link in 2011 – or if Jeremy Larson hadn’t picked up a guitar and thought, “I’m going to write some songs about the person I love.”
Here’s a promise I can keep:
I’ll never find another like you
We will stay together
Will you make a lucky man,
An honest man, a better man
For not allowing you to slowly slip away?
-Fort Christmas, “Engaged“