Mumford and Sons. This is a band I am really digging on right now, and I played some of their videos for Jim tonight and he watched and said, semi-agape, "They just rewrote the book." Which means, in his opinion (and in mine, and probably lots of others') they are redefining our generation's music. Thank god, let's hear some real music, instruments and feet pounding wood and let's not lose any of the poetry, or any of the adamance. They are bluegrass punk, hillbilly rock, epic banjo, and as Jim says, "make your heart swell" - said so well. For me, they blend Arcade Fire's youthful exuberance with the temperance of Fleet Foxes' throwback bare instrumentation of the spare 70's and a bit of Jack White's solo defiance recording in a broken down house. Also, they can break your heart with a raw honesty that is rare these days.
We don't often agree on music - he's very country and I'm very... not. We, in fact, abhor some of each other's music choices from time to time. I can't stand literal rhyming songs about coming of age sung in a Tennessee twang and he's not the biggest fan of atonal pounding on a piano, synth-y backbeats or poetical hard-to-decipher lyrics, for instance. So when we agree on something, it's a coup and we get excited. These Mumford boys have enough country for him and enough loud and poetry for me to satisfy us both. An example from the lyrics of the song above - "Darkness is a harsh term don't you think? Yet it dominates the things I see" - but in a major key (read: happy) with banjo - perfect balance.
An evening of listening to music while we cooked pizzas on the outdoor grill was a really nice after-day as we'd both had trying times today. For him, it was presenting his university-wide project idea, now a reality, he'd been working on for years to the muckety mucks. For me, it was one of those days when I leave my handbag places, rude weird people and everyone cuts me off in traffic and I wonder if my car is invisible, then I wonder if perhaps I'm invisible to the point where I am pinching my thigh while I drive to make sure.
But then I go home (coming home is so nice), and I put on my music and put away my groceries and talk to a couple three friends on the phone and prep dinner, then Jim gets home and we talk about what to do this weekend - fishing, camping, what? I called my dad and we talked about fishing ideas whilst Jim called his bro and talked about the same. We decided that we'd buy a little boat in the off season, I think, for use next year - something with an outboard that we can load up with gear for camping on islands and also fish from, obviously. This weekend is still undecided, maybe the biking trip to camp ten miles out on Eklutna Lake, or maybe I'll find us a nice little cabin to rent, I don't know. Everyone I talk to, and I mean everyone is catching salmon right now - dip netting and now bait fishing - and I am so jealous. I want some salmon.
I have to pause for a sec and realize the perhaps, seeming, absurdity about me writing about fishing and camping. I have come around to these things in the years I've been returned to Alaska, with fondness and desire, absurd that it was nothing I used to enjoy or seek out, and now I really do. It feels adventurous and independent and self-sufficient - to go out and exist, to catch fish - all on my own, our own, while knowing that people pay hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to do the very same things that we do for the price of a local fishing license, a campsite sometimes and food for the excursion. And then, on top of that, you get some fresh air and some fresh fish and some good times in utile outfits like sweatshirts, fat wool socks, rain gear and waders with others in the same, all of us just talking looking at the water, the mountainscapes, knowing that we live here amongst all of this, and it sort of belongs to us, belongs to me.
This is exactly how this grace thing works.
And it keeps being exactly what it is - this outdoors, nature that appeals - it is not a fad that will pass and be replaced by the next hot thing. It will keep being and being and being (as long as we take care). The fish will come back to run and spawn and the snow will move down the mountains in the fall and up in the spring, the bears will run out in the road in the summer and hibernate in the winter, the raspberries will hang low the bushes in the backyard in August and go bare and come back a year later, it all repeats, this very assuring and beautiful cycle of things to depend upon. But even without my reliance and hope they will be back anyway, doing their constant thing.
The music we cannot agree on, he and I, it's because of how we see the world. He is marinated in this good cycle of wax and wane, and I am new to the trust of fluxing things that go away and come back. He's always saying things like "give it four seasons..." or "it's the circadian rhythms..." and I've thought for all this time we've known each other and he's been saying these things that it was the country music in him or something, what is he talking about - changing moods and ideas with the seasons? Aren't we always the same?
Now I grasp this as I adapt - I see how we go mad in the dark and then how we go glad in the sun, and we are still the same person. I understand. But for me it's about all the little bits in between - the deep introspect in the dark and the sudden explosion of glee in the too-much sun - this is how I connect the dots that make up the big picture. We are both doing the same - he is overall, the overarching story from beginning to end, and I am plot points, the nitty gritty poetry of days, of nights that add up to meaning, and either way they both eventually add up to a beginning, a middle and an end.
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