https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSSah_EKwhQ

John Darnielle speaks about illness and managing through it in “Isaiah 45:23.”

Track: “Isaiah 45:23”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

Isaiah 45:23, the verse, forms one of the lines of “Isaiah 45:23,” the Mountain Goats song. The verse is about devoting your life to the Lord and accepting his divinity. John Darnielle cribs this with “let every knee be bent and every tongue confess.” Much of Isaiah deals with this level of intense devotion and the fiery language needed to get the population back on track in the eyes of the Lord after being swayed by idolatry.

John Darnielle says it’s a song about illness and how we respond to the news that we’re going to have to live with chronic pain. This is explicit in the song, with “the pain begins to travel, dancing as it goes.” Maybe you have a relatable experience and maybe you don’t, but either way you can imagine the moment you get the news and the ways you’ll have to adjust. After a former life as a nurse and a health scare of his own, John Darnielle knows both sides of this coin.

The versus use religious language, but the chorus is more universal while still expressing a connected idea: “and I won’t get better // but someday I’ll be free // ’cause I am not this body // that imprisons me.” There are other Mountain Goats songs in this vein, but few that go this explicitly to the idea that some things that feel permanent actually aren’t. At one point, often in a scary way but sometimes in a hopeful one, you will think of yourself as someone who can’t be hurt that way anymore.