Neko Case: ‘If I Didn’t Yell the Truth, What Good Was I?

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a new memoir out next week, the singer-songwriter Neko Case shares some painful childhood memories. In the studio with Anna Martin, Case is open and unapologetically angry as she describes being treated like “an unwanted child.” Both parents, she says, struggled with trauma and addiction. They often left her with no food and only her pets for company. Case also reads a Modern Love essay about the complex heartbreak that comes with being estranged from a parent with an addiction, and the joys of finding love and acceptance in the wake of that pain. Neko Case’s memoir, “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” comes out Jan. 28. Caitlin McCormick’s Modern Love essay, “My Mother, the Stranger,” can be found here. McCormick, who recently published a short fiction piece in The Sewanee Review, is working on a novel. Listener callout alert: For our upcoming Valentine’s Day episode, the Modern Love team wants to hear about a moment when you knew you were falling for someone. Whether it happened all at once or as a gradual process, we want to learn about how it happened. Where were you? What did it feel like? What did you do next? (You can tell us about a current relationship, a past love or something happening to you right now.) The deadline is Feb. 5, 2025. The submission instructions are here. How to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times How to submit a Tiny Love Story

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's Anna. Before we get started today, I just want to ask a quick favor. We're working on our Valentine's Day episode, and we want you to be a part of it. Can you tell us about the moment you knew you were falling in love? Where were you? What was happening? What did it feel like? It can be about a relationship you're currently in or a relationship from the
0:21.4	past. We just want to know about the moment you could tell, hey, I'm falling in love with this person.
0:27.4	Record your answer as a voice memo and email it to Modern Love Podcast at nytimes.com, and we may end up
0:34.4	featuring it on the show. One more time, tell us about the moment you knew you were falling in love
0:40.2	and send it as a voice memo to Modern Love Podcast at nytimes.com.
0:46.1	We are so excited to hear from you.
0:48.2	If you want to be included in the episode, your deadline is February 5th.
0:53.1	Okay, let's start the show.
0:55.6	Love now and more.
0:57.2	Love was stronger than anything.
1:00.9	And I love you more than anything.
1:04.4	What's love?
1:05.1	There's to love.
1:09.4	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
1:11.9	This is Modern Love.
1:13.7	Every week, we bring you stories inspired by the Modern Love column.
1:17.0	We talk about love, sex, friends, family, and all the messiness of human relationships.
1:24.1	Our guest this episode is singer-songwriter Nico Case.
1:42.7	Case has been making music for nearly three decades, and her songs have always struck me as so personal and emotional.
1:51.1	At the same time, though, you can't really tell when Case is writing as herself.
1:55.6	She's referred to a handful of her songs as autobiographical, but she also weaves in fictional characters, animals,
2:02.9	even planets.
	...

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