I wrote this as part of another post. But the reason I wrote that post at all was because of this. So it should be on it’s own.
I don’t even remember adding album Slow Air by Still Corners to my playlist. I thought my daughter introduced me to it, but no. Because it’s not house-y dance music, I often skip it in my playlist. I’m already introspective, I don’t need music to help me get there. So I had forgotten about it. But the album was waiting for me at this particular fork in the road where I realized needed to stay embedded in the tension of challenging decisions. I was searching for solutions that didn’t exist. The music saw me out the other side where I realized there is no frictionless path.
Dreamlands doesn’t have, and to my mind shouldn’t have, the complexity that In the Middle of the Night does. Instead has a kind of gentle simplicity, with its dreamy angelic voices and tonality of wistful hope. Like imagine that you deeply wanted to come to the aid of someone who was stuck, who maybe couldn’t even see they were stuck, or perhaps you became estranged with one you loved and you wished you could reconnect. For me it’s something else and perhaps it speaks to you differently. But I feel it as the dreamland of wishes and desires, of a wistful optimism, of longing, of hope and encouragement.
But the dissonance of that guitar cuts through like it’s the reality of life intersecting the dream. The guitar: murky, full of edges, slightly uncomfortable, but yearning and hauntingly beautiful in it’s own way. Maybe that section of guitar that is the long road that seems too far, maybe it’s the approaching dark.
It all goes together in my mind: this kind of hopeful optimism, the simplicity of deciding this (whatever this happens to be at the time) is the meaning I will make of it, this is the magic I choose to attach to it. All the while tempered by the harsh truth of past experiences.
I feel the dissonance of my own nature.
The pursuit of peace and happiness is almost always idealistic. And yet peace, happiness… while they may be idealistic, if you’re lucky and perhaps not looking too hard for it, can come in wafts of wind, glints of sun reflecting off the water, in fleeting moments and changing skies.
I took this image of this sky of gold before the pandemic but it seemed appropriate and matched the album artwork.
Music and lyrics below.
Dreamlands
Lyrics of Dreamlands – by Still Corners
I know there’s a long road
They told us it is unknown
If we wait too long then we’ll never go
I know where the sky is goldIt’s getting dark but we’re so close
It seems far but we’re not alone
If we turn back now then we’ll never know
We’ll go where the sky is gold