By David Olivares
Writer’s Note: I first drafted this article around late October ‘21, before I was even a full-fledged Caroline Polachek fan.
Who is Bunny? Well… Bunny is a rider. Even with a satellite, you can’t find her, and she don’t give out nothing for free. She’s so non-physical, ain’t around to be found, and her name isn’t present with many people either. She’s emotionally unavailable most of the time, and she’s AWOL on Thursdays. If you want to catch her, ask Alice (in wonderland) and see how deep the rabbit hole goes… but there ain’t any guarantees, either.
“Bunny is a Rider ” is a song by singer / songwriter / music extraordinaire Caroline Polachek, featuring productions from herself and gnarly bass melodies + production work from PC Music veteran Danny L Harle. The song was making the rounds across socials over the summer of ‘21, so I had no choice but to see what the fuss was about. Upon my first listens, I was thinking, “wow. This sounds soooooo obnoxious. Why am I listening to this?”. Thankfully, my gut instincts aren’t always right, and my first impressions aren’t usually final verdicts. After a few more listens, it became my favorite unexpected earworm of the summer.
Usually, when I really get into a new artist or musician, I search them up online for interviews, quotes, and reviews to get a look into their creative mindset and philosophies behind their work. Here’s one interesting quote from Polachek where she describes the meaning of the song:
———“‘Bunny Is a Rider” is a summer jam about being unavailable,” Polachek remarked in a statement. “Bunny is slippery, impossible to get ahold of. Maybe it’s a fantasy, maybe it’s a bad attitude. But anyone can be bunny, at least for three minutes and seventeen seconds.”——-
In my opinion, what this means is that ‘BIAR’ is all about FOMO – not the fear of missing out, but the freedom of missing out. In a way, the pandemic has made us all Bunnies. I cannot understate how lockdown has affected many peoples’ social meters and endurance for hanging out, checking in, and staying connected. This includes a good amount of my friends (understandably, for various reasons. myself included!), so I’ve got first-hand experience with this. While people tried to continue their social lives as best as they could through online streaming events, conference room hangouts, and chat room sessions, I’m pretty sure everyone can agree on two things: one, social events online are not as genuine and meaningful as the real thing in-person, and two, our pandemic routines were very, very unsustainable for tons of reasons.
We can only be Bunny for so long before our identities turn into nothing but piles of wet mush. Aimlessness can be alleviated with personal projects we can use as timesinks, or mindless escapades we put a lot of (a severe lack of) effort into to the point where they’re practically the same distraction. (One activity I considered to be both were my Minecraft worlds.) I love to quote internet anecdotes from time to time, and there’s one that still rings in my head to this day – our world shrinks to the amount of space and the size we use interacting with it. The world can be as small as your room if you choose to – and by no means is that healthy or recommended, or particularly fun in the long run.
Omnicron was a fluke – a grandiose misstep on the way for Southern California to clamber its way back to whatever sense of normalcy we experienced before the pandemic. [I wrote that sentence in January.] But now, with all God willing hopes and preparations, we can finally get out of this mess, slowly but surely. Whatever tf happens, one thing’s for sure – I’ll still be hopping along to Caroline Polachek’s songs, and hopefully, her new album that will release later in 2022.
