Blindsided

I've been listening to Bon Iver's Blindsided on loop, a track from Justin Vernon's solo debut album For Emma, Forever Ago (2007). Save for Skinny Love, I hadn't bothered to listen to the entire album until now. I guess I wasn't in the mood to wallow in this type of sad bastard music when I first heard Bon Iver in 2010. I was simply not ready for it.

I thought perhaps one has to reach a level of maturity before the pleasure of listening to gloomy music becomes anything more than a masochistic habit. Despite this realization, I knew sadness was a kind of drug. I used it many times to refuse reality without the intent of ever releasing myself from its stupor. It reminded me of lost years; sadness not in knowing I had lost an irretrievable part of my life, but that I did not want to forget whatever it was I had--and yet, already I was slowly forgetting.

Slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory;
speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

- Milan Kundera, "Slowness"

Memory is a fragile thing. Sadness and the tendency to sulk in it is an effort to slow down the passage of time. To play things in repeat is the illusion we give ourselves when we cannot see beyond loss.

The experience of listening to Bon Iver reminded me of the Japanese concepts of wabi, which is finding beauty in sadness, and mono no aware, which is the Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence or "transience of things." Some days I'd just sit here thinking what a great thing it is to feel so small and yet so alive simply by understanding these facts of life.

**Bon Iver means Good Winter in French (Bon Hiver - H in the French language is silent)

For Justin Vernon, the kind of loss he had to go through inexorably produced the melancholic dirge that is For Emma, Forever Ago:

"Following his break-up with his girlfriend at the time, as well as the break-up of his previous band DeYarmond Edison, Justin Vernon, suffering from mononucleosis, secluded himself in a cabin in Medford, Wisconsin for three months planning to "hibernate." Three months of solitude resulted in the creation of For Emma, Forever Ago. "All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stockpiled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Emma,_Forever_Ago)

--

As life would have it, I had the pleasure of sharing the music of Bon Iver to A. He isn't an audiophile like me, but we tend to have similar taste in music. He asked me if "Emma" ever returned to Justin after making such beautiful music for her. A. recalled a friend of ours who had a nine year relationship. The girl broke up with him one day. Gone, just like that. Our friend made a film for this woman, it was shown in many continents, it won praises. And yet--

Why do women do that?

What?

Leave, just like that.

I don't know. 

Would you come back if anyone made you 
something like this?--


I leave things the way they are. Emma could be reminded, but she chose to move on. Justin had to move on in the only way he could.