http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jNUTUefHGA

“Quito” is a song about a person possessed and the power they believe they have over things out of their control.

Track: “Quito”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

We Shall All Be Healed was released in 2004, and in 2004 there existed a website that had accompanying details about the album. It’s gone now, but like all ephemera, it was fascinating. One of the great elements was the following: “You can pick your friends, that’s what people’s mothers are always telling them when they’re growing up. Listen to me: no you can’t.”

The album is about John Darnielle’s time in Portland, Oregon where he and his friends all nearly died doing meth. His dark quote from that dead website speaks of the fact that drugs force you to make friends with people you may or may not like. Nothing else matters beyond the high, and every song on the album reinforces the driving, continuous movement towards the nothingness that John sought with this band of brothers. In various interviews he’s suggested that many of his old friends didn’t deserve the fates that befell them, but it’s never about what you deserve.

Quito is the capital of Ecuador and is literally the “highest” capital city in the world, elevation-wise. The song borrows this name to talk about the process of going home after you have been changed by leaving. John’s Portland is a terrifying world, but it’s a specific one that reinforced his darkest tendencies. The third verse is especially interesting, because it’s one of the few moments on the album that John allows himself to talk about the “after” period. He sees himself getting “off the wheel” and making amends to those he’s wounded. He believes (or claims he believes) in a type of resurrection for those who died alongside him. Above all, it’s a song about the specific life John led in Portland and the power of believing you’re capable of controlling what you cannot control.