Delivered Poetry: Jenny Lewis’s “Rabbit Fur Coat”

Let’s move ahead 20 years, shall we?

POV change. This is no longer the anecdote of her mother’s, and this is no longer about the (that) rabbit fur coat really. This is more about what became of all that mess, that mess over a coat. There is more colloquialism in the “shall we,” which adds to the smooth transition of this from her mother’s story to her own.

She was waitressing on welfare, we were living in the Valley

Again, alliteratively, wonderful phrasing. The Ws and Vs here create a wonderful—if not a little discordant—sing-sing song, between “Waitressing on Welfare, We Were liVing in the Valley.” From the soft “wuh” to the cutting “vuh” but still in the same beat, marvelously jarring.

Two big expository things here: One, she was waitressing, a job that anyone knows is not fun, is not a party, is hard work for the money. But more than that, she was doing it while on welfare. That is, she had work but still needed public assistance to get by. This is desperate poverty squared (especially for a woman coming from the airs of having a fur coat). Second, to an Angeleno, being “in the Valley” is tantamount to living in the armpit area of where ever you come from, the place where if you need to move to it, you know you’ve hit rock bottom.

A lady says to my ma, “You treat your girl as your spouse.
You can live in a mansion house.”

On a personal but anecdotal level, I can say many single parents of only children do end up having an oddly spousal relationship with their child; it’s the sort of thing others point out, like when people look like their own pets. They think they’re being cute and original about the observation, but are actually vocalizing a disturbing, subconscious undercurrent of loneliness and co-dependency. The addition of the suggestion of living in a mansion house just makes the comment sting all the more, knowing that “a mansion house” must mean “making it” or “achieving the max” to the narrator’s mother.

And so we did . . .
And I became a hundred thousand dollar kid

Clearly the narrator is not disagreeing with what “a lady” said. The next line we could take as a literal financial statement from Jenny Lewis’s own semi-stardom life, but I’d rather think of it as any sort of advancement that actually puts the narrator “above” the station of her mother. She becomes the “big family hope” and gets a degree and a “fine career.” So to speak. She becomes the next generation: The hope that the former generation’s life was worth it and will live on.

When I was old enough to realize,
Wipe the dust from my mother’s eyes . . .

Here it’s important to note that I don’t think she’s wiping dust as in she’s clarifying her mother’s view for her mother, but rather she’s wiping her mother’s nostalgic dust from her mother’s story. She’s seeing what really was.

Is all of this for that rabbit fur coat?

And we have the crux of the mother’s story: A girl with a quasi-reason to put on airs and how that attitude spells out her child’s conception and that child’s ensuing life.

But I’m not bitter about it—
I packed up my things and let them have at it.

The B alliteration in the first line—well, I don’t need to say more. Overall, the narrator is keenly aware of her history, she’s made peace with it and just moved on.

And the fortune faded as fortunes often do,
And so did that mansion house.

Ibid., in re: the F alliteration. Also, what was “so wonderful” about her life vis-a-vis her mother’s has become commonplace and everyday. The fact that she is “of poor folk” is no longer some sort of rallying cry for her; it just is another descriptor like her height, or the color of her hair. In the same way, the mother’s vision had faded for “a mansion house.”

Where my ma is now I don’t know

Defines the definite separation between the two characters.

She was living in her car, I was living on the road

This is a great use of metaphor here: The mother in her car, which is just this side of homeless. But still, the narrator was living on the road (this is probably taken from Lewis’s own touring experience, but could be extrapolated to mean any sort of wandering). What’s the semantic difference? They could both be said to be living on the road in a fashion.

And I hear she’s putting that stuff up her nose,
and still wearing that rabbit fur coat

Here, I can’t help but think of my Urban Studies 101 professor back in my sophomore year of university in Southern California. In speaking about the sort of threadbare-but-holding-on quality of downtown L.A. culture, he mentioned a scene he saw while walking through a more run-down part of the city, when he happened to look into the window of one of the ubiquitous donut shops in that town: An older woman, her face immaculately made up, hair dramatically up-swept, wearing a full-length fur coat while drinking donut-shop coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. Truly an image right out of Edward Hopper’s world, such a juxtaposition of that woman in such a milieu, full lost chances, dark victories, and a sure and certain reliance that her ship has not yet sailed.

But mostly, I’m a hypocrite
I sing songs about the deficit

Jenny Lewis is probably speaking here mostly autobiographically. Though from poverty she’s mostly a success, yet is still singing of poverty. More metaphorically, it could still be read on a general level when taken in with the closing lines:

But when I sell out and leave Omaha, what will I get?
A mansion house and a rabbit fur coat.

I assume “Omaha” represents the indie music scene of Omaha, NE, and the fact she openly refers to it as “selling out” is interesting. She’s not retiring, or moving on, but selling out. At one point, it’ll no longer be about the art or feeling or emotion and it will be about earning a paycheck. We could see this as self-mockery, making fun of her status in the “indie rock” world, or it could be a much darker prophecy. At some point we all sell-out our younger selves and become the things we never thought we would be. We enter the real world and we need to do quotidian things like paying rent and buying groceries, when all the art and emotion and passion of youth get mostly shoved aside.

And then, what are you left with? By this point, I take the rabbit fur coat to mean whatever it was that you came from and were proud of. That thing that—no matter what else—you still had to “prove” you were worthy and special and meant for greatness. You were born under a good star, or you have great athletic ability, or you are good at math, or you are a fashion model, or your family can be traced right back to General George Washington. It’s where you get the tenacity to keep getting up and facing the world day after day through the relentless struggle to be who you really are.

And the mansion house, that’s what the rabbit fur coat opens up to you. Your VIP pass to the club, a key to the world you know you were meant for, that ever-receding mirage just over the next hill, that place which once entered everything is done and you’re a success and it’s nothing but roses or whatever your choice of foliage or other such pleasure. That is, that driving goal in so many of our lives that when we think about it—really think about it—we know is as impossible as an Escher staircase.

And all those forces and beliefs and hopes? That is perhaps our most living legacy. It’s not what you leave behind or what you did while you lived, but rather it’s just that you had this thing which drove you onward, and that it never actually came to anything after all. I don’t mean to imply that Jenny Lewis is breaking brave new ground with this piece—it is reminiscent of F.S. Fitzgerald, and could well be used over the closing credits of the new version of The Great Gatsby being made—but that in such a modern and personal way she brings a great American theme right into indie rock . . . well, that’s something worth hearing.

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