Albumalia: For Emma, Forever Ago — Bon Iver

or
The Good Winter
Justin Vernon’s debut solo album stands as a towering tall tale of the indie music world. It’s mythic — almost to a ridiculous level — complete with a mid 2000s Jimmy Fallon interview to help spread the story. “He locked himself in a cabin all winter,” the rumor goes, “And he spent the whole time recording this album!” This is, of course, only somewhat true.
Fit it all,
Fit it in the doldrums,
Or so the story goes.
It’s easy to see why people would want this album — even subconsciously — to be as Romantic as all that. Justin Vernon’s lyrics make it so easy for you to project yourself onto the gentle, eerily familiar sound of his over-dubbed falsetto.
There’s a quality to the whole emotional taste of his music that can so easily slip passed your defenses and analyses, all the way to the rusty park swing and raindrop-speckled windshields of your memory. Through the buzz of a half-identifiable instrument, the subtle whispers of multiple guitars, the perfect breaks of near-silence, you are lead by the hand into a still place, implored to be hypnotized by the falling of snow outside a cabin window.
Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?
You’ve been hurt. You’ve worked so hard for something, to something, for someone, and it all turned so quickly to nothing more than tickets and fines. Your band breaks up, your health fails you, and your love leaves, with a raking of talons against your heart. Oh, and days of sun are all behind you; all that lies ahead is the frost. “Breaking point” doesn’t quite do these moments justice.
So apropos:
Saw Death on a sunny snow
The instinct is to forget — or lash out. To scratch and blur out all the photographs (like the album’s artwork shows) and tell yourself you’re better off now that it’s all over (like Skinny Love declares). But it’s not over. And you’re better off, yes, but not because it’s over. You’re better off because it happened.
For the agony,
I’d rather know
[…]
For the irony,
I’d rather know
I don’t think this album is about loss. I think it’s about re-evalutation. It’s not about what you’ve lost; it’s about what you have left — what you have now that you didn’t before.
What might’ve been lost -
Don’t bother me
You can always turn to this album with hope of what your pain will become. This beautiful, brutally honest and deeply poetic sound that defined the Starbucks background music powerhouse that Bon Iver has become wouldn’t exist without this season of pain.
Maybe, from that standpoint, “pain” isn’t the right word, because Justin is working toward something — he is thinking aloud during his pilgrimage to something stronger.
So, then, let us continue the myth, because nothing can devalue the truth of the parable. Let this remain the grand origin story -
Color the era,
Film it — it’s historical.
A new kind of ancient, almost-holy text to which we can turn when building the civilization in our soul.
This my excavation,
Today is Qumran
Think, then, of what you will become when the snow begins to melt and you start to find your voice again. It won’t be a “crispy realization” — in all probability, it will be a long (perhaps never-ending) process of stacking and unstacking your burden.
And if, on your long way back home, you need a reminder that there are other people who know what it feels like, this album will be here for you. Justin’s Winter of physical and emotional healing is yours, too — and it’s been crystalized, clarified, and immortalized in these nine tracks.
A beautiful, eternal, Good Winter.
