Letter from Belgium

Letter from Belgium
	; On "Letter from Belgium"
Album	We Shall All Be Healed
Released	2004
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	3:14
Previous track	"Linda Blair Was Born Innocent"
Next Track	"The Young Thousands"
Next Track (single)	"Nova Scotia"

Letter from Belgium is the fourth song on the album We Shall All Be Healed. It also appears as the second song on the 2021 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4. It was first released as an EP, along with the B-sides "Nova Scotia" and "Attention All Pickpockets."

Lyrics[]

Martin calls to say he's sending old electrical equipment
That's good: we can always use some more electrical equipment

In the cold clear light of day down here
Everyone's a monster
That's cool with all of us
We've been past the point of help since early April

Susan and her notebook
Freehand drawings of Lon Chaney
Blueprints for geodesic domes
Recipes for cake

Yeah we're all here
Chewing our tongues off
Waiting for the fever to break

When we walk out in the sunlight we tell everyone we know it hurts our eyes
When the real reason we don't like it is that it makes us wonder if we're dying

And Martin's found an old trunk full of stage makeup in the basement
And he's sending it along, we can always use more makeup
Yeah, more creams and powders

And Carrie's got the feeling
That the people next door
Will close in like a wolf pack
Should we make one small mistake

Yeah we're all here
Chewing our tongues off
Waiting for the fever to break

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

"You may have a friend or two who, uh, of whom you were fond in high school.... you knew a guy, a total creative dude, right? Very nice, intelligent, smart dude, living out there on the edge, introducing you to music that you maybe might not have heard without this dude, right? And, uh, it's always a dude, by the way, um, so -- well, it is, I mean, because the women don't become junkies until a bit later, as a rule. So, you know, and then one day, after high school, you have forgotten about dude, you know -- I mean, you remember him from time to time, looking at the yearbook, 'Oh, I remember, I wonder what happened to that guy?' and then he shows up at your door because he needs ten dollars. 'Man, I didn't even hang out with you. I know you from, like, you know, wood shop class...' But anyway, he shows up to borrow money from you, and he's got this very earnest manner, that sort of seems like a very natural thing for him to do, you know. 'Hey, how you been?' And you immediately buy into that. You go, 'Oh, I'm fine, and you?' instead of 'I haven't seen you in four years and I barely know you.' 'Hey, how's it going, Jim?' Jim says, 'Ah, man, it's kind of rough, I totally need ten dollars.' And later, when you're considering what might have gone down with the ten dollars, you know, that parted ways with you when Jim left, uh, you wonder whether he plotted this whole scheme out or whether he's just a genius of improvisation. This is a song populated by a multiplicity of Jims, and it's called 'Letter from Belgium.'" -- 2010-04-11 - The Zoo - Brisbane, Australia
"This is a song about some friends of mine who liked methamphetamine too much." -- 2017-12-04 - Harvester Performance Center - Rocky Mount, VA
"It's hard to explain any experience from the outside, but particularly when it involves a lot of experiences that a lot of people haven't had. Um, so when you talk about staying up all night shooting meth, you exclude ninety-nine percent of the population from really being able to say, oh, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. They don't know. To make them know, well, you don't want them really to know [laughs]. You think, what's another thing that people can't understand? A country they haven't been to, right. A, a place they know something about, they know its name, they've heard about it, they could identify stuff that's from there, but they can't go there. They can't have been there. I think that's where, that's where that intersects." -- 2022-04-25, Depresh Mode podcast interview, explaining the "Belgium" references

Things Referenced in this Song[]

Lon Chaney was an American film actor who appeared in many early silent horror films.

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]

We Shall All Be Healed
Track list: "Slow West Vultures" • "Palmcorder Yajna" • "Linda Blair Was Born Innocent" • "Letter from Belgium" • "The Young Thousands" • "Your Belgian Things" • "Mole" • "Home Again Garden Grove" • "All Up the Seething Coast" • "Quito" • "Cotton" • "Against Pollution" • "Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of"

Letter from Belgium
Track list: "Letter from Belgium" • "Nova Scotia" • "Attention All Pickpockets"

The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4

Track list: "In the Craters on the Moon" • "Letter from Belgium" • "Woke Up New" • "Pez Dorado" • "Picture of My Dress" • "Whole Wide World" • "Dark in Here" • "Korean Bird Paintings" • "Snow Owl" • "Against Pollution" • "The Last Place I Saw You Alive" • "In Memory of Satan" • "Bell Swamp Connection" • "Rat Queen" • "Shelved" • "Sax Rohmer #1" • "This Year" • "Have to Explode" • "Game Shows Touch Our Lives" • "Until Olympius Returns" • "The Young Thousands" • "Corsican Mastiff Stride" • "Blood Capsules" • "Hair Match" • "Solidarity Forever" • "Soft Targets" • "Black Pear Tree" • "Wolf Count" • "Never Quite Free" • "Wild Sage" • "Jazz No Children" • "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" • "Exegetic Chains" • "Going Invisible 2"