Neko Case
Appearances
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
No, music is the only thing that never let me down. But trauma did not make me a great musician. Like, I am a journeyman at best. And, you know, I'm broke. I don't know. I think great musicians do other things. Well, did you just say you were broke?
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I think your fans would be shocked. The confluence of my house burning down, COVID, and streaming. Those three things together. Wow. And I cannot catch up.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I felt absolutely unafraid. And I was seeing an actual moment of grace in life.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I mean, I am of the species. I am a man. Whatever's going on downstairs doesn't matter. I have all my faculties. You can call a female or a male lion a lion, and they're still a lion. I'm a man in that same way. And I am so thrilled and proud and excited by generations younger than mine who are not backing down from who they think they are and the idea that they get to be who they are.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
That has been one of the most exciting things I've ever witnessed, and it has given me so much more insight into myself, you know, because I never felt like a girl or totally a guy. I'm more of a gender-fluid person.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
As neither. I am neither. I still call myself she, her. I'm used to it. It doesn't bother me. And partly because the world hates women so much, I will not abandon it. I just won't. but I also understand that the world hates gender-fluid people and trans people, LGBTQ people, and I understand the importance of not abandoning that either.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Politically, we are... Socially, I don't think what, you know, the president and his people represent represents the American people. I don't believe that Americans in general have a hatred or a problem with people who are not white, who are LGBTQ, who are immigrants. I just don't think they do.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Like, politics and everyday life just—they just aren't separate. Not that I want to talk about them, politics specifically, because I just refuse to be afraid.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Well, I have really benefited from menopause. And, you know, a lot of people who menstruate who don't anymore have said the same things about what, you know, the hormone shift. Like, you don't care anymore what people think of you. And also, I just came from...
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Over and over and over and over. Like, only— A neurodivergent ADHD kid can do. Right.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
seeing one of my best friends die and sitting with her body for four days as you know she was an organ donor and she had a massive aneurysm and you know her partner just heroically did CPR. And then the paramedics came and kept her pulse going and got her to the hospital and they stabilized her despite the fact that she had no brain activity.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
And you cannot be an organ donor unless you die on a respirator in the hospital. Like, it's very, very specific. So, and then you have to wait for all the tests. Like, there are, you know, barrages of tests that happened to make sure that, you know, you're healthy and that you're your organs can really save someone else's life and not be rejected.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
So we spent days just with her and talking about her life and what a selfless person she was. We joked a lot about how she was going to work even in death. She was all about service. And then the day came. Right on the way to the OR, what they do is they do a thing called an honor walk. And we went down what seemed like miles of corridors behind her hospital bed, behind the doctors.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
And the corridors were lined with doctors and nurses and hospital staff honoring her. And it seemed like... One of those movies where you see the people going down the corridor in slow motion to get into the spaceship to go to the moon or whatever, and everyone's saluting them, and it seems so important. And I think I actually saw that in real life.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
And I just thought, all those things that I worry about and the injustices, we are so right to fight for them. And I was there watching this incredible thing happen and these beautiful people from all over the world, many of the doctors are immigrants. And, you know, it was a mix of people of all colors from all over the world and all different cultures.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
And I felt so utterly galvanized against the fear and so utterly galvanized in that joy is the way forward.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I don't, but I do talk about this occasionally.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Oh, yeah. I mean, relationships with people are all very different and some are very complicated and some are not.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Music was always just there and I took it for granted, but I also leaned really heavily into it. I did not make a connection that music was something I would want to do or I would do because I was kind of, you know, I was just a girl. And I did not. make a connection between myself and Blondie or myself and the Go-Go's. I just knew I really loved them.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I have a lot of compassion for my dad and a lot of sadness because I feel like his development was arrested completely. And, you know, he had to be an adult man and, you know, head of the family and all these things. And he was just a kid inside. Yeah. And he didn't know how to handle it. You know, he maintained it with
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
drugs and drinking for a long time but then it catches up with you and the kind of pain from that I he didn't use what happened to him to manipulate anyone like his forward path was genuine he wasn't Doing a great job, but he was also, you know, a 19-year-old kid when he had me. And he didn't want me, but he ended up with me.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Yeah, it was nice because when I was a little girl, I would have loved to have had him show me how to do things. Because he was always fixing the car, you know, or the truck or whatever. And it would have been nice to have been included. It would have been—I mean, when I was a kid, I thought he wanted a boy, and I thought he was really disappointed. But he just didn't want any kids.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Probably Hold On, Hold On. It's melancholy, but... It feels very much like I am in charge of myself and I make good decisions in it.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
partially. It's a moment of actually seeing yourself clearly. It doesn't mean the moment's going to last. I mean, I think I also partly feel that way because I wrote it with the Sadies and, you know, I have such a loving relationship with them and You know, it's always made me feel good to play it. And, you know, my dear friend Dallas Good passed away a couple years ago, way too young.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
And so now it takes on a new sort of heaviness. But it's like a heaviness that feels good to carry somehow.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Well, I was raised to be female in the United States of America. So, you know, I wasn't raised with a lot of self-confidence.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
It wasn't so much deciding I could do it. It was just that I couldn't help but to do it because the desire was so intense.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Even just to sit near it. Anything. Anything I could have.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Okay, okay, okay. No, no, no. It's not powerful and it's not pretty. Like, those are things that, you know, I wish it were powerful. I don't care that it's not pretty. I very much enjoy hearing women singing in ways other than being pretty. And, you know, singing is an incredible physical feeling. It's like...
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
your mouth is a fire hose, and you can twist your insides and make a powerful thing come out to the point where your feet levitate ever so slightly off the floor.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
It is so athletic, and... There's nothing else like it.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Oh, it's straight up misogynist and racist and hateful. We don't even have to sugarcoat that one. The current country music scene of radio music in Nashville is absolutely heinous. And I watch young women try to get in there, and I love them so much, and they're trying, and I'm like, don't even bother. Let that thing die. That thing is poison. Come over here. Let's make the other thing.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
The gatekeepers of country music are absolutely terrified that it might evolve, whereas the gatekeepers of rock and roll don't have a problem with evolution. But there's something very white supremacist about how country music works, and they're really, really dialing down on it now.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
There have been a couple. Yeah. You know, sometimes people are so talented that they're undeniable and not even the gatekeepers can tell. Keep them out. Uh-huh.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
We're lucky to have Beyonce doing a lot of things. That's true.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I tried to not give away the songs as much as possible. Like, there was a couple times where I kind of went into them, but I don't like to ruin songs for people. You know, how you will hear the lyrics of a song one way and then you find out it's not the lyric that you thought it was and then you're like, oh. Yeah. Not as good anymore.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
You know, like, if you think you know what a song's about and it makes you feel... connected emotionally to it and it becomes a little chapter heading in your life, you know, you don't want to ruin that for people.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Well, that song was a real event. I was really at a bus stop in Honolulu fleeing Hawaii and I saw it happen and I just felt so helpless. You felt helpless to protect the kid. Yeah, but the kid also was being very resilient and she was, you know, entertaining herself. She was very spunky and cute and
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Well, I mean, I told the story. I just... I've never written a book before, and, you know, I didn't set out to write a memoir. I wanted to write fiction. But, you know, it was at the height of the pandemic, and Hachette said, we'll pay you to write a memoir, though. And I was like, okay, a memoir it is. And that's not a complaint, or, you know, they didn't hold my heels to the fire or anything.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I just thought, okay, well, it'll just be a little challenging. Because... talking about yourself or writing about yourself to yourself isn't the most exciting thing ever. You know, you spend a lot of time with yourself. So I don't think of myself as like, oh, people are really going to want to know this.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
So, I mean, that's one of the reasons I tried to pick more interesting stories from childhood that were scenes maybe of good things too. Because I didn't want it to just be you know, oh, poor me, especially because it's not unusual. It's most people's experience. I mean, you know, my situation with my mother is pretty bizarre.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
But neglect or abuse or things like that, those are most people's experiences. Or growing up really poor, like, that is most people.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
I didn't know that until I was in my early 20s and I told somebody I knew that my mom faked her death. And then they were like, that's the weirdest fucking thing I've ever heard. And I was like, oh, yeah, that is actually pretty weird, isn't it? But, you know, kids, like kids just think what's happening to them is what happens.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
So, you know, I just didn't it didn't occur to me.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
It's in me all the time. And, you know, it's just not my fault.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Only in a super nerdy kind of neurodivergent way. Slash Virgo way where I'm like, oh, I'm taking all the things and I'm organizing them in this box. And so now I can put this box over here like a hard drive. So my brain has more room in it. And it's all color coded and I know where it is.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Well... The mythology of people needing to suffer to make beautiful things or just art or creative things in general is not true.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
No, if I had had a supportive upbringing, I would be able to read music and play instruments and... would probably be a lot further along. You don't need that.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
It's an absolute trunk of shit. The things that I admire about myself are despite those things. You know, like, I still am a trusting person. I still really want to see the good in people, and sometimes I will make mistakes and trust people I shouldn't. And I could beat myself up about that, or I could just go, no, you still want to believe people are good.
Radio Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
And I think that's a more important quality than trust. whether or not you're wily enough to spot a jerk a mile away. You know what I mean?