End of Summer I: Three Songs

Summers always end on a bittersweet note.

I just realized that I never had a typical "summer romance." But despite avoiding the awkward end-of-vacation goodbyes, I still felt the bittersweetness of the end of summer.

The feelings of freedom slipping away haunt me every August even though it's been years since I had to buy pens, notebooks, or lined paper in early September.

This year feels strange -- not just because seemingly all of Southern California is on fire (although that's disconcerting) and not just because Labor Day is unnaturally late (which made everyone I know feel like this week was just borrowed time), and not just because radio is dying (although... ).

If I had musical synaesthesia (and many of my friends will tell you I do), this feeling would owe a hat tip to the excellent I ♥ Icelandic Music blog and look a lot like the mesmerizing video for "Ljósið" by Ólafur Arnalds (whom I last mentioned here). As the colors rally, burst, and trail behind the cool of the evening, there's a slight echo of promises unkept and tasks unfinished. And the slow decay reminds me that the sunlight is vanishing, a few minutes a day, moving us closer to darkness even as we rush to find a way to keep that light glowing for just a few days more.

Ólafur Arnalds - Ljósið (Official Music Video) from Erased Tapes.

And fall waits around the corner, like an overeager actor poised to jump onstage. The air crackles at night with newness chances, new opportunities, new beginnings. Dancers crowded around the edge of the dance floor, storing up their energy, waiting for the cowbell to bring them out, and hoping to hear something new with more than a little echo of the old, like Philly's Free Energy. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Bonus: Iceland's Gus Gus weighs in on healthcare reform. Or at least paints a synth-pop masterpiece with "Add This Song," which undoubtedly would have burned up the airwaves back in the early 80s. (No embed code, so click here.)

On The Shortest Day of the Year

Today is the shortest day of the year.

Ancient societies gathered each year to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Today, as the darkness gathers around us and the weather turns cold, sadness and endings seem to be everywhere, and a plaintive melancholy blankets the earth like a new snow.

Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound
But while you debate half-empty or half-full
It slowly rises, your love is gonna drown

Death Cab for Cutie (a band named after a song the Bonzo Dog Band song performed in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour movie) seems to understand this time of year perfectly as they create languid soundscapes of infinite sadness punctuated by a growing sense of hope:



The ancients created the Winter Solstice celebration to nurture and feed that hope. After today, the days get longer and light slowly returns to replenish the earth. Starting right now, by minutes (or sometimes even seconds) a day starting now we reclaim the world from the forces darkness.

Today, in Reykjavik, there is sunlight for 4 hours and 56 minutes. The economy is in tatters and people are uncertain of their future. Tomorrow brings only 10 more seconds of daylight. But gradually it increases until summer (where the sun technically sets but leaves behind enough light to see 24 hours a day).

Olafur Arnalds is a 21-year-old Icelandic classical musician who covers Death Cab for Cutie with a string quartet. Even without words, the mixture of hope and sadness seeps through (and what is it with the devotion of Icelandic bands to otherworldly sonic soundscapes anyway?), which is strangely appropriate on the shortest day of the year: