“Quetzalcoatl is Born” is not really about Quetzalcoatl, but even beyond that provides space for you to make it about anything.

Track: “Quetzalcoatl is Born”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

“Quetzalcoatl is Born” opens with a clip from a Barbara Streisand song. That’s how old it is, it’s still from the days of albums with samples and oddities designed to deepen the experience and provoke questions. Maybe that’s overstated and maybe it was all just to be weird, but I am fascinated by it nonetheless. This is the song that closes Zopilote Machine and it closes with a creation story.

You can, and should, read about this elsewhere. It takes more space than I have to explain what’s happening in “Quetzalcoatl is Born,” but put briefly, it’s the story of the creation of the sun and the moon. The gods leap into the fire and the sun is born of the least likely of them. It’s a story about how excellence can come from anywhere, no matter who goes into the fire, and what great things are possible when that happens.

At Zoop II, a legendary request show from 2009, John Darnielle played this live. The crowd is into it and it’s worth hearing, but it’s extra notable for following “This Year.” You cannot follow “This Year” at a Mountain Goats show, even one where everyone is as passionate as they are at this one. Some of the crowd howls and yips at weird moments, but that’s gonna happen. What makes it great is to hear how much John Darnielle loves it. “Into the fire you go, go, go” he insists, and you forget what this is supposed to be about in place of what it could mean in that moment.