Chapter 3 | "Phantom Limb" by The Shins

This is that foreign land

With the sprayed on tans

And it all feels fine

Be it silk or slime

I first discovered The Shins in 2007, three years after their song, "New Slang," was included in the soundtrack to Garden State (2004). I remember wishing the film had existed when I was twenty-five—it would have wrecked me in the best possible way. Even though that pivotal screaming-into-the-void period had resolved for me, I still recognized it as a phenomenal film that belonged in my top ten.

There were several keepers in the movie’s soundtrack, which really was phenomenal all around, but The Shins was the only band that I really jumped down the proverbial rabbit hole on. That’s how I discovered “Phantom Limb;” it was one of the songs on Wincing the Night Away, which had just released as I was discovering the band.

My read on "Phantom Limb" was that it was about being trapped in a time and place that's fundamentally out of step with who you are, but there was no alternative…not yet, anyway. Until that path becomes clear, you’re left with a gnawing awareness that something needs to change.

That feeling of outgrowing your own shell is what Chapter 3 is all about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkITsv3Nk6M

Autumn's Playlist: Outgrowing Your Own Life

In Chapter 3, Autumn goes to a New Year's Eve party in a high-rise hotel room in downtown Boston with Lucy. It's full of people she graduated high school with, most of whom she hasn't seen since then. Seeing all those familiar, forgotten faces serves as an uncomfortable reminder that Autumn is stuck living a life that's too small for who she's becoming, like a hermit crab that has to abandon a smaller shell to find another that fits better.

That sentiment of being stuck, but lacking the opportunity to change it is why I chose this song. After deciding on it, I started researching it and was delighted to find a Wikipedia entry where The Shins' songwriter James Mercer described "Phantom Limb" as "a hypothetical, fictional account of a young, lesbian couple in high school dealing with the shitty small town they live in."

Though there's nothing LGBTQ+ about this scene, the feeling is identical: that cloying pull of something new and different beckoning in the distance, while you're surrounded by small-minded people you feel no kinship with, unable to take a step toward what you really want. The song's lyrics lend themselves just as well to Autumn's story as to Mercer's original inspiration.

I originally wrote Chapter 3 as part of Chapter 2, but later decided to break it out into its own chapter so it could have its own song. Even though that left Chapter 2 at just two pages, this moment at the party in Boston deserved its own soundtrack.

Your Phantom Limb

Maybe you've experienced that sensation of outgrowing your own life before you know what comes next, or maybe standing at a party surrounded by people you've known forever, but feeling like a stranger among them.

When you read Chapter 3 and listen to "Phantom Limb," you might remember your own moment of being stuck between who you were and who you were becoming. Your experience of feeling trapped, of sensing a life you couldn't quite reach, will shape how you hear this song and understand Autumn's story.