December Songs 2 (2017)

This year in particular, live music has been deep solace.

In a year of crying––a lot of it internal––music has brought tears to the surface, into the healing light.

Dancing releases the toxins of doom and anxiety. But so too does music that rivets you into a place of stillness, where your heart blooms into a great big om.

Seeing Jon Collin in an underground (literally) vintage clothing shop was a hermetic experience.
I had listened to a few of his tracks for the first time the day of. But really, I had no idea.

The scene of the concert was akin to sitting in a living room with friends, the musician a hearth. There were racks of textiles from many eras, fancy hats of old aunts,  and mod lamps forming pools of soft light. I walked in the snow. Ran from Nazis. Felt a frenetic panic that dissipated into a menthol steam. Flew like a great moth in a beautiful orbit. The whole thing was unprecedented.

These December songs posts should be brief and possible. But I have already troubled for a good hour on how to describe what the experience of listening to Jon Collin was for me. Let's begin with––I can't seem to find the language to capture it.

His was a transcendent meditation through unexpected turns of sound. I strolled from one structure to another, welcome hallways, starlit spheres, expanses of homeland, and found myself huddled in a kitchen from my past, gazing out a long window at winter moors and tall summer grasses.

The video below was filmed almost five years ago, an entirely different scene, and likely a different composition (I don't think I would really know). But it captures the beauty and the mystery and the flight. A parallel universe to the pedestrian.



I wrote this in the notes app of my phone while sitting in the glow of Jon Collin live in that groovy shop. I stumbled upon it recently, and it took me a while to remember whence it came, even though the event was only two weeks ago.

Fog on glass pane
The snow stippled trees
The chamber alike
Light in the mind where shadows threat plays against stucco
Hallows of the hallways
Between a child's bed and the lovers futon
Sheets swiveled into rain
The downward downward

Listen to recent releases of Jon Collin here and here, and more of his tracks here and here.

And here is a simply lovely review of jon collin, that says all that i didn't manage to.

And here is a photo from winters past.