Media and Music: Songs For Frances, Nick, Moons, and More
There’s no nautical-themed birthday party in “Conversations With Friends,” but there might as well be — the plot and theme similarities between Phoebe Bridgers’ “Moon Song” and her favorite book are no coincidence.
Written by Anjali Krishna
Photo courtesy of Randy Holmes
The moon exists, in literature and songs, on a string and in human hands.
It’s something to be grabbed and picked out of the sky with a tender heart and good intentions: a symbol of everythingness, of love for its intended recipient.
“If I could give you the moon / I would give you the moon,” Phoebe Bridgers wrote in her sophomore album, Punisher. This is her “Moon Song,” a tribute not to the controller of the tides itself, but to a man who controlled her the way the moon does the ocean.The movement of heaven and Earth that characterizes Phoebe Bridgers’ “Moon Song,” the “‘wanting to be stepped on’ feeling,” as she describes it, is also present in Frances, the narrator in Sally Rooney’s first novel, “Conversations With Friends”.
Bridgers read “Conversations” while working on Punisher. “Conversations” is Bridgers’ favorite book, and, coincidentally, Frances is the fictional character Bridgers feels she relates to best. Rooney’s protagonist is reserved, observant, and deeply emotional. She constantly worries about whether she’s kind to others, about who she is as a person, about how witty she appears to others.
Both Bridgers in “Moon Song” and Frances in “Conversations” know their lover doesn’t want them back, but, regardless, both women will “Wait for the next time you want me / Like a dog with a bird at your door.” Bridgers’ lover is “sick, married, and might be dying.” Frances’ lover Nick is “curiously passive,” “clinically depressed,” and also married. If Frances is a literary embodiment of Bridgers, the self-conscious and eloquent narrator, then Nick is the object of Bridgers’ song — and affections.
In both the song and the book, the women find themselves as “water in (their lovers’) hands.” Nick is married, and, in a way, still in love with both his wife and Frances. Bridgers’ lover “Couldn’t have stuck your tongue down the throat / Of somebody who loves you more.”
Frances and Bobbi are university students and slam-poets. Melissa, who’s a successful writer herself, meets them at one of their local shows. Nick is also a creative: he’s a small-time actor and 11 years older than Frances. They kiss for the first time at his wife Melissa’s birthday party. He’s actually oddly similar to Frances: struggling with his reservedness and as only revealed later on in the novel, his depression. Dangerously, their flirtation begins after Melissa introduces him to Frances and Bobbi (with whom Frances used to have a romantic relationship). It’s not just about sex. He cooks her dinner, and she tells him about her family. They’re strangely vulnerable with one another and in a uniquely terrifying position, considering Melissa and Bobbi’s close friendship.
Frances and Nick break up the first time when Nick goes away to film. Before his departure, Frances struggles with preventing her own self-defensiveness (which often comes in the form of ironic, biting texts) from getting in the way of their relationship. Eventually, it becomes too much for both of them — their breakup feels like a bad dream of miscommunication and error. Bridgers portrays this miscommunication in the chorus of “Moon Song,” as the narrative of the song reaches its pinnacle, fueled by misunderstanding and hostility. “There’s something I’m supposed to say / but can’t for the life of me / remember what it is.”
To an objective viewer, it appears that she’s aloof and uncaring towards Nick. But through her internal monologue, Frances is truly highly vulnerable, embarrassed at every possible slipup and misspoken word, making it nearly impossible for her to communicate her true feelings. This depth of uncommunicated feeling is impossible to bury under layers of irony (Frances’ go-to solution) — it will eventually crop up in the most unexpected places. Bridgers reflects on this same phenomenon in the simplest terms in “Moon Song”: eventually, emotional baggage makes it possible to “Fight about John Lennon / Until I cried.”
Surprisingly, Bridgers is a fan of Lennon, despite her and Frances’ generation’s large rejection of him as a figure. Oberst and Nick’s generation is more sympathetic, but, considering both of their feminist tendencies, neither are the type to defend Lennon. Context helps explain how the roles reverse: how Nick and Frances, nor Bridgers and her lover are purely what they seem.
Nick is easy to write off based on the first few chapters. Sure, he seems kind and witty, but he’s also cheating on his wife with a young woman. Frances, in turn, plays mind games with Nick, makes subtle remarks about his cheating, and, for some time, acts as though she doesn’t want to be with him at all. Bridgers’ lover gets a similar start: “You asked to walk me home / But I had to carry you.” Subtle and slow instrumentals back her explaining a lover who needs help with finishing what he’s started. The song twinkles as it introduces a man who may not exactly be Nick, like water rolling over guitar strings. Despite their obvious flaws, in Bridgers’ opening lines and in Rooney’s first few chapters the romantic interest isn’t necessarily selfish and careless.
Even though Bridgers’ lover exercises complete power over her, he isn't dominating the relationship, as Bridgers may like to believe. Her lover needs to be carried home, taken care of, and Bridgers is the one to do it. Bridgers tries for a scathing portrayal of his inability to follow through on his promises, but she can’t quite get there — the song, ultimately, is filled with love. Neither can Frances. After an argument with Nick, Frances berates herself, thinking that “he has all the power and I have none. This wasn't exactly true, but that night it was clear to me for the first time how badly I'd underestimated my vulnerability.”
She’s quick to concede her broad statement’s lack of truth. He is older than her, and seemingly less invested. But Frances seems to know that their affair isn’t one of predator and prey — Frances has control over Nick as well. Nick’s relationship with Frances has been the first thing to successfully improve his mental health, Melissa allows after discovering the affair. Though Melissa attributes this to his improved ego by successfully “seducing” a college girl at 38, Frances doesn’t necessarily buy this. She’s able to worry Nick when she goes out with a guy from Tinder, gain his sympathy when she's ill, and insult his intelligence, implying that she has a far greater importance to him than Melissa believes, or wants to believe.
Yes, she is “water in [his] hands,” impossible to catch and constantly slipping through the cracks. And “When you saw the dead little bird / You started crying / Cause you know the killer doesn’t understand.” She is the loving dog who drops some dead catch at the doorstep, as it’s the only way she knows how to express her love. But Nick cries out of empathy for Frances: The dead bird is her own self, torn up and tortured, ruined for loving him. Frances treats Nick badly because she believes it doesn’t affect him. Yet, even at her little remarks, he grows silent and upset. He is as human as she, giving and kind, though both struggle to express themselves as such.
As the music swells, and Bridgers’ voice soaks up the emotion from the crescendoing backing strings, she sings the bridge, which reads just as a back and forth argument between Frances and Nick might: “You are sick / And you are married / And you might be dying.” She is sick, suffering silently from endometriosis. He is married. Both might be dying, him from depression, which once encouraged his suicide, or her from her condition, which has worsened to the point of her passing out in churches and living in excruciating pain. Bridgers’ words would fit perfectly in the lovers’ mouths in the form of their classic passive-aggressive arguments brought on by some little remark, wrought with love for one another and confused about where to go next.
Phoebe, in Greek, is moon. By giving someone the moon, Bridgers is handing over her entire being. And that is what Frances does at the end of “Conversations.” Nick mistakenly phones Frances instead of Melissa, asking something as commonplace about which type of vegetable to bring home. After their tumultuous end, in which Nick tells Frances he is still sleeping with Melissa, their phone call is a strike to the heart.
But Nick reminds her, then, of their first kiss. He tells her of his “impulse to be available to you.” If he tells her where his car is, he says, he couldn’t move, knowing that there may be some miniscule chance she would come to him. This is their cycle, this is their beauty. They come back to one another as the moon waxes and wanes, reaching fullness time after time, as two halves become whole.