Day 20
TODAY'S SONG:
"Calgary" by Bon Iver
A
few things this song reminds me of. Most recently, I remember
driving through Ellicottville on our way to Maryland for a job
interview I had last summer. We just happened to be listening to
this album on our way there, so I guess it stuck. I remember the
off-season ski lodges and corn fields.
A
little further back, I remember sitting at the coffee shop in the
Buff State student union looking at my iPad while waiting for one of
my final classes to start. I found Pitchfork's year end list of
2011, scrolled through, and found that Bon Iver
had taken the #1 spot for album of the year. I tend to disagree with
them a lot, but I thought this one was a good pick. However, there
should have been an asterisk about the final track on the album,
which is the weirdest most out of place garbage track in music
history (as far as I know; although I guess that's probably what
people thought about “Revolution 9” on the White Album and all). I will show you what I mean:
Then
I remember the first time I ever heard Bon Iver. Kayleigh and I had
taken a trip to Pittsburgh, visiting our friends Caroline and Lou.
Caroline baked a homemade pizza and we probably opened like half a
dozen bottles of various wines. Lou was involved with some outdoorsy
organization which was presenting the Banff Film Fest. We weren't
entirely sure what that was, but we went anyway and it was awesome.
The
feature film was about an Australian kayaker who attempted to cross
the stretch of water between Australia and New Zealand. Prior to
that, there were several shorter films, including one about
“no-boarding,” which is snowboarding without the straps to
connect your feet to the board. There was a lot of beautiful slow
motion footage of no-boarders in Japan, but I was struck by the
soundtrack. It occurred to me that it might be that band I had heard
about a couple years before, Bon Iver. That band everyone liked that I decided to
not look into for no reason. And it turned out that, yes, all the
songs in that short film were from For Emma, Forever Ago.
Lucky for me, my pal Jordan had sent me a few mp3 CDs a year earlier
which happened to include that album. Kayleigh and I listened
to it on repeat for about a year.
Here's my song, featuring the poem "The Vacation" by Wendell Berry (and a clip or two of Matt Berry from Snuff Box).
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