where's that light you're looking for?

[ontology]

I've been feeling very muddled and broody and cluttered lately, but tonight I put Moony in my pocket and took a candle-in-a-jar from my trunk and wended my way up to the hill. Behind my house, at the end of the street, there is a hill that looks over much of the town. It isn't terrifically tall, but there is a statue (of the founder of the town, I think), and a gravestone, where either he or his horse is buried. It's a strange, overgrown place, all weeds and hummings and wildflowers and long-grass overlooking the lights of the town and the street. I've been going there more often lately and wondering why I haven't been hiding out there more often -- regretting it, now, since soon I won't live in this neighbourhood anymore. About a third of the way up the hill -- there's a gravel path -- there's a little almost-grove, surrounded by trees and bracken, sort of nestled into the woods like a hide-out. What a lovely place it would be to come & eat apples & read, I think. I'd wandered over there yesterday evening, partly by accident, because the sky was an extraordinarily odd colour around sunset, and I ran out to admire it, and ended up wandering up the hill and sitting in the grove until it began to get dark. Well, I've an album I've been meaning to listen to as soon as I could scare up some appropriate atmosphere, so I took the iPod and a candle and my long orange sweater-coat, because it's been rainy and blustery and delightfully chilly and grey all day. I sat the candle beneath a tree and lay down beside it, and there was only me and the music and the trees (and the insects, drat them).

And what music! I recently discovered Dark Dark Dark (whose name I pretend comes out of part III of "East Coker" although that's not especially likely), and they're sort of -- I don't know. Like Victorian street-music in the alleys of New York and London, cold winters and fierce autumns and full moons, and magic lurking amongst the trees that may either bless you or do you harm. They've got eerie male/female vocals, an accordian, back-room piano, banjo, cello, and, in one song, a saw (♥!). If you wandered into a ramshackle nineteenth-century circus or a turn-of-the-century amusement park, this sort of music might be played in the corners. Here, have a taste. It's the perfect music for waltzing with oneself to the light of a lonely candle on a damp, chilly almost-autumn evening -- which is exactly what I did. (It turned out to be very good music for dancing, especially my sort of awkward untrained what-does-the-music-feel-like dancing.) And when I finally wandered back home the sky was purpley-black with rainclouds, except just over the hill, where there was a thin gauze of light.

Tomorrow I shall have to be in the world again...

Comments

[barefoottomboy.livejournal.com]

Strange stuff, but certainly rather wonderful in its strangeness: sounds a little like Beirut's Flying Club Cup album (though less France-inspired), or that's the closest personal musical experience I can link it to.

Based on this, I think you might like Mara Carlyle (http://www.myspace.com/MaraCarlyle): try Saw Song (http://www.last.fm/music/Mara+Carlyle/_/Saw+Song?autostart) (track should start automatically) from her The Lovely album, which has possibly the most beautiful packaging/artwork/lyrics booklet I've ever seen. (My favourite songs from the album are actually Baby Bloodheart and Blame You Not, but they don't have the saw, so.)

"Folkasmagoria" = awesome genre tag, btw.

[greyeyedpixie.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a wonderful night-time experience~
I wish we had a hill like that nearby. :) I can totally relate to the annoying bug thing though. I step out on my front porch & they literally swarm me. Unless it's raining...which is a perfect time to be on the porch.
Hope you get to do it again soon~

[tsunamisama.livejournal.com]

Dark Dark Dark sounds like they've been hitting the opium and absinthe a bit too hard, frankly. :P And perhaps suffering oxygen deprivation from overtight corsets...

Actually, IMHO it sounds a lot more like acid-tripping flapper music than anything Victorian.

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

Oh Banui, I love you so much. ♥ Snagging that song, and allowing your words to paint a picture of your experience in my head, as I always do. Reading your journalism is always escapism and reality for me ... escapism in that you transport us to beautiful places, reality in that you express & encapsulate experiences and ideas that sound like they come out of my life (much more capably than me). :))