The Meaning Of: GET OUT
Crissi Cochrane
Welcome back to The Meaning Of, a series of blog posts exploring the meaning behind each song from my 2020 album, Heirloom. I’ll explain the stories that inspired the songs, and reveal some of the roots and references that helped shape my musical and lyrical choices. If there’s something particular that you’re curious about that I haven’t revealed, leave me a question in the comments below, and I’ll be pleased to answer it.
Next up is track five: Get Out. This backstory is the most intense and complex, and was the hardest to revisit. It’s also an example of how a song can be created by over-dramatizing a situation, and of how songs can take on new meaning over time.
Get Out describes a confrontation in a way that is unequivocally physical: I can’t scream and shout with you. You want to hurt somebody. But the truth is, there was nothing physical whatsoever about the interaction that inspired it. I’ve very flippantly described the song as being “about an email”, calling it an example of over-dramatizing a situation for the sake of the song, but that explanation is a bit too simple. In my heart, the hurt was so real it felt visceral to me.
It was 2015, the summer of my worst anxiety, a smothering blanket of self-doubt, and I was having a hard time playing shows. Before every gig, I’d be laid up in bed, sick to my stomach, with a pounding headache and a racing heart, just holding myself and crying all day.
And to me, it was imperative that I keep this private. I couldn’t afford to develop a reputation for being too sensitive, too mentally unwell to work. So I continued to say yes to everything, every opportunity that might be good for my career and finances.
The only two gigs I’ve ever cancelled were that summer. It always feels terrible to cancel a show, but it feels especially bad to do it when the reason is that you can’t control your mental illness. It feels like it’s 100% your fault, like somehow you could have avoided it, if only you were stronger, better, smarter. You still feel sick, but now you also feel ashamed. The first cancellation wasn’t too bad; I was able to find a great replacement act, and the promoter only teased me a little about it. But the second, the one behind Get Out, went very badly. And the blame is mostly mine, because I never should have accepted the show in the first place.
Me in the summer of 2015, playing a gig in Toronto that made me so nervous, I spent a small fortune on Gravol and meal replacement drinks.
I had followed my mantra of saying yes to everything, and accepted a gig on remote Pelee Island with faith that I’d sort out the logistics, but every plan was very precarious, and even personally dangerous. The ferry terminal was far, and I didn’t have a car; the island had poor cell reception and I didn’t know anyone there; I’d have to stay the night, but I would be travelling alone. I’d hoped Mike would be able to come with me in the Walkervilles’ band van and we could make a little trip out of it, but the band ended up being booked elsewhere that day, and I couldn’t find anyone else I felt safe to travel with. I could only arrange tentative rides to the ferry terminal, and would be on my own from there. The promoter suggested I share the gig and accommodations with another local musician, but it wasn’t someone I knew well enough to do this with.
Finally, I was laid up in bed, sick with worry about how I was going to make this show work, without getting stranded, lost, or worse, and it was still over a month away. Mike saw what a wreck I was, and insisted that I cancel the show. He was afraid of what I’d be like as the show got closer. I knew he was right; I couldn’t play this show. The island was inaccessible to me.
Booking the show in the first place had been a mistake. But the way that I cancelled it was the most colossal mistake of my music career. In my anxiety-addled mind, I believed that the reason I was cancelling was because of how sick I felt, and not because of the impossible, bending-over-backwards, going-through-hoops logistics - got down on my hands and knees - that made me feel ill in the first place. I convinced myself that it was just another episode of Crissi Being Too Anxious To Work. It wasn’t until I started writing this blog post last week that I realized my anxiety was actually legitimate worry about a dangerous situation.
Pelee Island.
I didn’t want to confess to the promoter that I was too mentally unwell to play the gig, that opportunities were a burden to me. So I thought, if I’m going to get a reputation, it would be better to have one for being worth more money than they’d offered me. (I’m cringing as I type.) I said that I’d been offered a gig for $1000 on the same date - which is not really even such a big sum at this point in my career - and couldn’t afford to turn it down.
What foolishness. So unprofessional, so stupid, when the truth was completely understandable. The island is a remote location; not everyone can get there. I was just an impoverished girl, alone, no car, no credit card, being asked to stay overnight in a place where I didn’t know a soul. It’s enough to make anyone feel sick.
But I had signed a contract, I was the headliner and the concert was an important fundraiser, and the organization had already paid for radio ads with my name in them. The promoter was rightfully very upset with me, and told me so via email. Just after reading it, my phone began to ring, and it was a number I didn’t recognize - I was terrified that they were calling me (they weren’t, but I was too afraid to check). Instead of answering my phone, I retreated to my office and wrote Get Out.
I still worry about the damage I caused to my reputation, cancelling that gig. I was scheduled to play another date later that summer with the same organization, one where Mike would be available to travel with me in his van. But the promoter fired me from that one right away, saying “I’m not sure that you’ll come.” Had he understood that it was unsafe for me to make the first gig, I might have been able to keep the second. I have applied to play other events on the island, and have only received rejections so far, so I wonder if maybe I’m on some kind of a blacklist now. To this day, I have never set foot on the island. A part of me feels… unwelcome. It feels like it could never be, for me, what it is to everyone else. I plan to live in this region for the rest of my life, and I’m not sure when I’ll forfeit this feeling. I’ll just have to keep moving forward, and hope that my black mark fades away someday.
I still say yes to almost every opportunity, so long as it makes sense for where I’m at in my career. But I always make sure I can work out the logistics first, and I would never hesitate to talk to the promoter if I felt like my personal safety was being compromised by the gig.
Over time, this song took on new meanings. When certain relationships fell apart, this song fit the situation like a glove. But the most potent new meaning comes from an event that feels closest to the actual words of this song.
In October of 2016, I went to Staples to print out some posters for an upcoming show at The Windsor Beer Exchange. I had a cute, faux-leather, hard-shell laptop bag to safely store my print-outs, and keep them from getting creased on the bus ride home. It was a sunny and windy day, and there were three other women waiting for the bus when I arrived - two beside the bus stop sign, and a girl under a tree, a few metres away, on a little grassy median. I decided to stand in the shade of the tree.
Crissi Cochrane at The Windsor Beer Exchange, October 2016. Photo by Joe Smychyshyn.
I’d rushed out of the store because the bus was due any minute, and I hadn’t had a moment to stash my papers in my cute bag, so I leaned down to adjust my parcel when I heard a voice in my ear. It was the other girl under the tree, suddenly right next to me, hissing, “you aren’t the social worker who’s following me around, are you?” Closing my bag, I said of course I wasn’t, to which she snarled, “you better not be,” taking a fistful of my ponytail and jerking my head to the side.
Until the bus came, she pranced around me, stroking my face, pulling my hair, and verbally assaulting me. I couldn’t get her to stop touching me. Maybe it was the wind that carried her voice away, or maybe the fact that she looked so much like me she could have been my friend, but the other people at the bus stop didn’t notice a thing. She mocked my laptop bag, making all sorts of assumptions about who I might be based on it (now I was not a social worker, but a spoiled university brat), before launching into insults that would have utterly destroyed me if she’d said them to me at the height of my anxiety: You think you’re so perfect, you think everyone loves you but you’re worthless, you’re a complete failure. Everyone hates you, everyone wishes you were dead, and no one would miss you. All the while, touching my face, yanking my hair so that it came undone. I can’t even remember all the barbs, I just remember feeling grateful that none of them bothered me because I knew in my heart that I was loved. I initially tried to be nice to her, to tell her that I was sorry for whatever she was going through, but it only egged her on; I belatedly realized it gave her reason to believe that maybe I was, in fact, some social worker following her around, instead of just a completely random stranger who she was assaulting.
The bus stop has since moved, but it was in front of this building, and I stood under the tree on the right.
When the bus came, I let her board ahead of me, because I couldn’t have her behind me where I couldn’t see her. As I gestured for her to board first (an act of desperation more than one of courtesy), she touched me for the last time, caressing my cheek and saying, “you’re so sweet”, in a voice dripping with disgust. The bus was mercifully crowded; I watched her move to the back of the bus and I chose a seat up front. Halfway through the ride, she pushed past the standing passengers, back towards me - I kept my eyes on the floor - and declared loudly, petulantly, that she’s been tested for HIV. Or did she say she was HIV positive? I don’t remember. The other passengers raised their eyebrows and giggled at this strange, unbalanced girl, and she went back to her seat.
I was afraid when I got off the bus that she’d follow me home, but she didn’t. When I got to my apartment, I finally cried, stripping off my clothes and washing my hair until my scalp burned. Mike was away, travelling, so I called my friend Vanessa and she talked to me until I stopped shaking. To this day, I find it extremely upsetting if anyone touches my hair in a ponytail, however gently or lovingly, and it took months before I could ride the bus by myself again.
So, that’s the story I think of when I sing Get Out. I don’t think about the island - man, that was ugly - but I think of that girl, and I wonder what happened to her. I do feel bad for you. It’s hard to lose.
Now, onto the musical roots of the song. Because I was writing this song so quickly and so instinctively, as an immediate escape from an uncomfortable moment, I didn’t dwell too long on musical choices - Get Out came to me very urgently and was finished within the hour. I knew it needed to be something that felt almost dissonant to capture the way I felt. Those first lines - speak low - give it to me slow - my heart is beating so - over that major-to-minor-and-back-again progression, really expresses the sickening feeling I had. I think it was around this time that Mike and I first discovered Lewis Taylor, and I think that’s what inspired me to start articulating more complexity and moodiness in my chord choices.
In this song, I also quoted Amy Winehouse’s “Take The Box”, a song from her debut 2003 album Frank, about breaking up with someone by making them take back a box of all things they gave you (devastating). In it, she says: And then I heard what you say; man, that was ugly… Which I morphed into the very similar, And anyway, you had your say; man, that was ugly… When Amy sings it, the melody is quite pretty. But I wanted there to be some musical agreement between the word “ugly” and the melody of it, so I made that a little drawn-out chromatic moment.
GET OUT - CRISSI COCHRANE
Speak low
Give it to me slow
My heart is beating so
Time out
I can't scream and shout with you
You wanna hurt somebody, and I'm all alone
This is my home
So get out - get out
Don't wanna hear no more about
What I've done wrong by you
Because your true love ain't so true
I tried to please
Got down on my hands and knees
And now it's time for you to leave
Get out, get out, get out, get out
And anyway
You had your say
Man, that was ugly
I do feel bad for you
It's hard to lose
But I don't got nobody else
I've gotta look out for myself
So get out - get out
Don't wanna hear no more about
What I've done wrong by you
Because your true love ain't so true
I tried to please
Got down on my hands and knees
And now it's time for you to leave
Get out, get out, get out, get out
I tried to please - got down on my hands and knees
I tried, I tried, I tried - god knows how I tried
Now I'm done
So get out - get out
Don't wanna hear no more about
What I've done wrong by you
Because your true love ain't so true
I tried to please
Got down on my hands and knees
And now it's time for you to leave
Get out, get out, get out, get out
LEARN HOW TO PLAY THIS SONG >
LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR? BUY IT ON CD OR DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
Or find it on your favourite streaming platform here.