Skirting the sky

Last night on the grass looking up above the city lights at the moon, I fell into that familiar trace that seems to find me when I’m dancing. After running and jumping and throwing my arms out to the music, I collapsed at one point onto my back, and lay there on the cool grass looking up at a small satellite, skirting the sky. In some strange way, it seemed to pulse with the music and glide through the waves of sound moving from one ear to the other, across my head. Sigur Ros. The band of all bands. There are moments, many of them, when I listen to this band, and conclude that they are making the most beautiful sounds that any musicians have ever made. And I don’t just mean music, I mean sounds. It is not simply the melodies and the movement of rhythm, but it is the collection of sounds therein, the soul of which I speak. The soul of these sounds.

In music, and all art perhaps, I believe that there is this magical place where restraint and excess find themselves dancing {to use an obvious metaphor} and somehow lock themselves into perfect, synchronized, motion like water upon water, flame upon flame. And in this place, this place of momentary grace, something transcendent is created that lives with us forever. And so it was last night, as I flung my body about on the grass, beneath the stars, listening to the new Sigur Ros record, which as all of the music they have made is utterly brilliant. It really is unbelievable to me. The music they make, is somehow ancient and new, the breath of long gone beasts, tangled in the arms of an infant. In some way, it is precisely this precarious image, a vicious beast holding the most fragile of all things in its arms, that gives their music the wings that it undoubtedly has. It is somehow so fragile and yet overwhelmingly powerful and infinite. Nearly every time I hear their music, I simply want everything I do to sound exactly like that. To be exactly like that. My smile, my paintings, the way I walk, my poetry, my voice, my music, my everything. And so I danced. I danced until my muscles and lungs could take it no more, which was quite some time. I danced off all of the worries I’m currently having about my state of financial disrepair, of being overwhelmed about school starting, records to finish, shows to book, a film festival in Palm Springs. and so on and son on. Life if you will.

And then today, standing behind Keri at the kitchen table gathering things for lunch, she reads the email that one of the two cats died shortly after her departure. She cried and I hugged her. I closed my eyes and imagined myself holding him they way he liked to be held, slung up over my shoulder, his haunches cradled by my right arm. This, dear reader, was the only way the cat would allow me to touch him for more than two seconds. In this subtle embrace, Doobie would remain for hours if I would let him. May times, we simply walked around the house like that, doing the household things one does. And so, as happens now and then, life reminds us that it is indeed unpredictable. Change is ever-present, and the water we ride will run into rocks, and will alter its course. He was quite old for a cat, and died we believe of natural causes, the simple ravages of old age. I pictured my grandfather, sitting in that chair the last time I saw him, the drool running its carved stream down the left of his chin, looking strangely present after so many months of drifting. Doobie had been sleeping excessively the last few months, and the dear woman who has been watching for him, said that he simply walked outside in the morning, and was found lying on the grass, up near the studio, where he liked to walk slowly, hunting the small flies that buzzed the weeds. Perhaps, in some way unbeknownst to me, I danced for Doobie last night, the music and movement of my body carrying his spirit off to places full of people shouldering him just right. Life is like that I think, for we are always dancing for someone or something we love.

As for Palm Springs, Mike and I made a documentary about out dancing last winter and sent it off to some festivals…this is the first of hopefully many. You may read a bit about it here. I guess the unpredictability can be just as full of light as it is the sadness of death. Death is after all, perhaps the only predictable thing there is in life…..it is simply the timing we don’t know. And so we dance. We dance and listen to the most beautiful music we can find. We look at the moon, and laugh at ourselves. We shake our legs, and fall onto cool grass, watching satellites skirt the sky. We stand at the kitchen table, holding our wives as they cry, feeling guilty about animals they’ve left behind. We walk into the living room, turn on the power, and let Sigur Ros fill the room, with its magic. Those sounds from forever. That place I long to always be. That satellite orbiting the earth, a white river in the black sky.

Posted by jeff pitcher at September 16, 2005 08:09 PM

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