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[Image from <\/em>Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. Today seems like a good day to open with this, since it marks the official release of Spike Jonze’s film version.]<\/em><\/p>\n From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Threat<\/strong><\/p>\n You can live for years next door (Denise Levertov [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n Threshing<\/strong><\/p>\n The sky\u2019s light behind the mountain Before, when the sun was high, But under the trees it\u2019s cool, This hour or two is the best time of day. The men lie under their canopy, apart from the heat, To a man, they know when the hour\u2019s gone. Above the fields, the heat\u2019s fierce still, even in decline. The sky\u2019s bright, but twilight is coming. So much time best forgotten. (Louise Gl\u00fcck [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n …we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. “God is at home,” says Meister Eckhart, “We are in the far country.”<\/p>\n We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home.<\/p>\n There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. The god of today is a tree. He is a forest of trees or a desert, or a wedge from wideness down to a scatter of stars, stars like salt low and dumb and abiding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n Finally: “Lost in the Trees”<\/a> is the name of a musical group, or project — a musical something<\/em> (his recording company calls it a “folk orchestra”): the brainchild of a guy I would not be surprised to see one day receiving a MacArthur Fellowship<\/a>. His name is Ari Picker, formerly of a North Carolina-based indie band called The Never. I know nothing about The Never. All I have to go on is how Picker described them in an interview<\/a>: “The Never was much more on the rock ‘n’ roll page. More Beach Boys harmony stuff.” Which doesn’t sound awfully promising for an ambitious young musician.<\/p>\n Indeed, Picker himself left The Never to attend Boston’s highly respected Berklee College of Music<\/a>. There, he began formalizing what he apparently<\/a> had been secretly working on for years, alone: “an eerie mix of lonely bedroom folk songs, lo-fi sound collages, and film score compositions.”<\/p>\n If this sounds even less promising, I offer for your consideration this sample — all the above, infused heavily with what Picker has evidently learned of classical music. It’s a number called “All Alone in An Empty House,” from (his? their?) album of the same name released last year. I haven’t found lyrics for it anywhere yet — when I do, I’ll post them. In the meantime, this should hold you. First, there’s a video:<\/p>\n
\nto a big pine tree, honored to have
\nso venerable a neighbor, even
\nwhen it sheds needles all over your flowers
\nor wakes you, dropping big cones
\nonto your deck at still of night.
\nOnly when, before dawn one year
\nat the vernal equinox, the wind
\nrises and rises, raising images
\nof cockleshell boats tossed among huge
\nadvancing walls of waves,
\ndo you become aware that always,
\nunder respect, under your faith
\nin the pine tree’s beauty, there lies
\nthe fear it will crash someday
\ndown on your house, on you in your bed,
\non the fragility of the safe
\ndailiness you have almost
\ngrown used to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nthough the sun is gone — this light
\nis like the sun\u2019s shadow, passing over the earth.<\/p>\n
\nyou couldn\u2019t look at the sky or you\u2019d go blind.
\nThat time of day, the men don\u2019t work.
\nThey lie in the shade, waiting, resting;
\ntheir undershirts are stained with sweat.<\/p>\n
\nlike the flask of water that gets passed around.
\nA green awning\u2019s over their heads, blocking the sun.
\nNo talk, just the leaves rustling in the heat,
\nthe sound of the water moving from hand to hand.<\/p>\n
\nNot asleep, not awake, not drunk,
\nand the women far away
\nso that the day becomes suddenly calm, quiet, and expansive,
\nwithout the women\u2019s turbulence.<\/p>\n
\nas though the work were done.
\nBeyond the fields, the river\u2019s soundless, motionless —
\nscum mottles the surface.<\/p>\n
\nThe flask gets put away, the bread, if there\u2019s bread.
\nThe leaves darken a little, the shadows change.
\nThe sun\u2019s moving again, taking the men along,
\nregardless of their preferences.<\/p>\n
\nThe machines stand where they were left,
\npatient, waiting for the men\u2019s return.<\/p>\n
\nThe wheat has to be threshed; many hours remain
\nbefore the work is finished.
\nAnd afterward, walking home through the fields,
\ndealing with the evening.<\/p>\n
\nTense, unable to sleep, the woman\u2019s soft body
\nalways shifting closer —
\nThat time in the woods: that was reality.
\nThis is the dream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n