Over spring break, I saw my favorite band, Sleater-Kinney, in concert. One of my favorite performances of the night was “Hunt You Down,” a track off of their newest album that can be summarized, in brief, by its chorus: “The thing you fear the most will hunt you down.” Compared to the studio version, the live performance evoked a raw, anxious fear that gave the song a compelling resonance. One moment in particular stuck with me: in the second verse, S-K’s guitarist and vocalist sings “Sorrow hides outside my door disguised as luck / It looks me in the eye, it seems to know me;” Brownstein screams the word “Eye,” creating a climatic moment of tension and energy. I’ve been listening to the song on repeat since then.
This quarter in my ENL 113A (Chaucer’s Minor Works) class, we’re reading his Book of the Duchess. In part of Book of the Duchess, a knight performs a lyric composition grieving the death of his lady. He says “For I am Sorwe and Sorwe is I [For I am Sorrow and Sorrow is I].” A stanza later, the knight begins explaining a game of chess he lost with “fals Fortune [false Fortune].” As I read through these lines of personified Sorrow and disguised Fortune, I could not help but think of S-K’s “Hunt You Down.”
Chaucer is working with the popular medieval idea of Fortune’s wheel—essentially, everyone has their place on the wheel of life (visualize a waterwheel), controlled by Fortune. She spins her wheel unpredictably, so people are rewarded and punished by chance. In theory, everyone will spend part of their lives at the top of Fortune’s wheel, as well as at the bottom.
It’s interesting to read the lines of “Hunt You Down” against this medieval idea of the Wheel of Fortune. (Granted, they don’t quite map onto each other, but I’m going to try anyway).
In The Book of the Duchess, Fortune is “fals” because she can reward someone, only to then let them fall to the bottom of her wheel. The success someone has while at the top of the wheel is not sustainable, and therefore a facade of fortune. A temporary placement at one end of the wheel will inevitably be reciprocated by a placement at the opposite end of the wheel. In “Hunt You Down,” Sorrow is standing outside the speaker’s door, disguised as Luck. Similar to medieval philosophy, there’s a seemingly inherent link between elation (fortune) and despair (misfortune) exemplified through the mutable figure of Sorrow/Luck. Chaucer’s deceitful Fortune is representative of both success and adversity, though her name does not imply this duality. Likewise, the Sorrow/Luck of “Hunt You Down” employs a similar duality to trick its victims.
The lyrics of “Hunt You Down” imply that misfortune is inescapable, which is congruent with the medieval Wheel of Fortune. But unlike in medieval philosophy, where bad luck resulted from chance instead of purposeful punishment, S-K suggests that individuals are targeted by false Fortune—it will hunt you down. But, in the general “you” repeated throughout “Hunt You Down,” there’s a notion of equality; everyone—you included—will be hunted down by their deepest fears, and therefore everyone has an equally unpredictable chance of facing despair.