Kinda like a cloud I was up way up in the sky
And I was feeling some feelings you wouldn’t believe
Sometimes I don’t believe them myself
And I decided I was never coming down
Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye
It was just about too small to see
But I watched it way too long
It was pulling me down

I knew where Trent Reznor was going with these lyrics, but my interpretation in the autumn of 1989 when I first heard it was personal: it was a parallel to the past two years of my life, when I’d finally found my own close circle of friends, only to have them leave upon graduation. See, back then there were two things I had to deal with as a teenager: one, the lack of any kind of social media or easy (and inexpensive) way to remain in contact with them…and two, undiagnosed ADHD that had me hyperfocusing on all the wrong things. “Down In It” encapsulated what I felt at the time: having lost what had been a really great thing followed by the triple-punch of maintaining a long-distance relationship, the inability to find my place at college, and my inability to properly focus on schoolwork. Most of that first year in college was spent in a slow but constant spiral.

I mean, I was also drawn to the band’s unique sound, a mix between the grooving EBM beats of Front 242, the heavy anger of Ministry’s distorted industrial metal, the sterile synthetics of mid-80s Depeche Mode, the clinical experimentation of Severed Heads, the atmospherics of 4AD, and the goth doom of Skinny Puppy. [Reznor admits this song was definitely a riff on their single “Dig It” from 1986.] It was an album that bridged the sounds and lyrics of 80s and 90s electronic music, taking the listener towards a kind of darkness they might not be prepared for. It was the perfect soundtrack to what was going on in my head at the time.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the second single and album opener “Head Like a Hole” — I felt it didn’t quite capture the tense desperation of “Down In It” — but it certainly worked as a big fuck you to my roommate, who I should not have been roommates with. But the second track, “Terrible Lie”…

…that was an even bigger and more violent fuck you to the world in general. I was not a happy person then, obviously.

Side-closer “Something I Can Never Have” was part of that. I’d been put through so many emotional wringers over the last several months and saddled with so many stressful situations I wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared for that this song was the closest to how I felt at the time: exhausted, lost, and numb. I knew I had to deal with these spirals, not to mention having to figure out workarounds that would help me academically, but I wasn’t entirely sure if I had the strength to keep it up. I kept feeling like I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go in.

Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.

I’ve said plenty of times that I used to listen to my copy of this on my Walkman on train rides home for the weekend during those first few college years. Friday nights on the Leominster-Fitchburg line, having escaped the stress of school and looking forward to a few all-too-quick hours with my girlfriend T. A day or so to recharge before I headed back into Boston on Sunday afternoon, ready for another go. Pretty Hate Machine was a reminder of where I was at that point in time, a way of prepping myself for the inevitable facing of another day in a situation I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in.

Which is why I loved that “Kinda I Want To” opened side two. It was a complete change of direction: you know what? Fuck it. Let’s do this. Let’s see where this all goes, good or bad. As much as I thought I needed emotional and mental stability at the time, I also knew I needed to BREAK THE CYCLE.

Nothing quite like the feel of something new…

“The Only Time” was part of that as well. After the chaos of the track (and third single) “Sin” and the pain of “That’s What I Get”, we’re finally at the point where I want to say enough is fucking ENOUGH already. In my head I had to break so many cycles: my Catholic upbringing, my small-town mindset, my pleasing others often to the detriment of my own happiness. I had to cut ties somehow. Or at least ride it all out until I could escape.

Ending the album with “Ringfinger” may not have helped matters, because to me it was a reminder that change could not and would not happen overnight, and not without my needing to take the necessary steps first. Some of those steps would be immediate, others would take a few more years. But I had to make that move. Emotionally exhausted or not, there was no other direction I could move at that point.

*

This album popped into my Threads feed the other day, as it had celebrated its 35th anniversary on Sunday. “Down In It” had also popped up on KEXP the morning I’d had to drive A down to SFO for one of her business trips, and it got me thinking about just how close I’d gotten to this album back in 1989 and into 1990. My cassette copy of the album had been played so often that most of the lettering had worn off it. It got a major amount of play throughout the years (except for a few where The Downward Spiral took its place in the mid-90s) and resurfaced again during the Belfry years. I still equate it to that time in my life where I felt like I was on a precipice. Decades have passed and I’ve figured out mental workarounds and achieved emotional stability. I never thought of that time as “just being a fucked-up kid”, to be honest, because I was trying not to be. I just had a lot of growing up to do and had to do it with little to no guidance, and I had to do it without help or influence, one way or another.

I’ve remained a Nine Inch Nails fan, though I don’t think I’ve ever resonated so deeply with an album as I did with Pretty Hate Machine. It’s an album that came out at a specific point in time, provided a life soundtrack, and kept me balanced in its own unique way.