“One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.”
—Vincent van Gogh
Let me hold two truths together.
First, writers discussing the what, how, and why of their craft often talk past the limits of what’s interesting.
Two, a pair of conversations about the work of words just opened a tiny book of revelation in me.
On a recent midweek morning, I make up one-fourth of a Zoom mosaic. The other three corners contain faces of writers I adore, and twice in their presence, I use the word “ambient” to describe what surrounds and seals my work.
Two forces I often mistake for one another, God and anxiety—each in the atmosphere, humming in the background as I write.
Anxiety and the sense I can’t please any of the people any of the time—myself included—lingers. Then someone asks about the evidence of God in our sentences, and I point out his shadow, the sort of haunting presence Flannery O’Connor named.
Two forces I often mistake for one another, God and anxiety—each in the atmosphere, humming in the background as I write.
Just a day earlier, in the afternoon glow of time with young writers, my poet friend Caylin observes how we all want to be different kinds of artists, creating in the manner of someone else. And in the next moment, I’m telling a student I want my writing to feel like Ben McLaughlin paintings: full of blues and grays, set to strange music and stormy breath, shot through with a damn stubborn light that never goes out. I don’t know how to better describe the way I want you to feel.
These conversations come in a season when I lean closer to ambient music. I stop talking and disappear into the long compositions Moby offers, each slight harmonic shift confessing eternity. Eluvium’s Matthew Cooper plays my language on the piano, gentle, cascading figures as parts of speech.
Not all atmospheric sound arrives with such soulfulness; two very different artists captivate me most, drawing on what’s ambient to them and offering me shelter.
Texas duo Stars of the Lid, most active from 1993 to 2007, recorded gorgeous songs with titles like “Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy,” “The Artificial Pine Arch Song” and “Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage.” Their music represents a covering of wonder; principals Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie build a cathedral for their sound from their sound.
Perhaps all we know how to build is a threadbare tent or lean-to, but we shelter one another, give each other somewhere to disappear into.
Invited in to cure my curiosity, I encounter angel choirs; scruffy, sad-eyed Wim Wenders angels stretching and yawning, poking a neighbor between the ribs, still listening close enough to tune. Wandering over to elaborate windows, I gaze outside to see forms of water—clouds and lake—reaching for each other. Their movement matches the singing.
Each measure is like the last frame of a film, extending toward the edges of one great story; each second like a minute, honoring God’s time by reversing its duration.
Mount Eerie songwriter Phil Elverum ostensibly makes folk music, but he too envelops me. Elverum pulls together ambient sadness and squalling weather; moments of clarity between the drenching and the drying out; midnight sighs and the rhythms of our breathing when the daylight shines too bright. He calls me to come underneath this canopy of sound and feeling, offers me my own corner with a cot and hot plate, a few tattered novels to read.
Just enough space to know the chill in my bones, just enough to burrow into comfort.
This is the way artists love us, the way we might love others, however we make something of the world. Perhaps all we know how to build is a threadbare tent or lean-to, but we shelter one another, give each other somewhere to disappear into.
The notion, so often repeated, that we make art just for ourselves sounds profound. But life never really works out this way. I want to transcend creative proverbs, build from what’s in my atmosphere and make room for you.
My hands reach out to pull in the resilience of porch lights, steadfastly themselves against the blue-black of 9 p.m. Central time; the regrets which permeate Ben Folds songs, regrets I know full well; the slick of storm-soaked sidewalks and the way future rain sounds like jazz; my catching breath when I reach a poem’s line break, so barely perceptible; the shivers I know before a Rothko color field; the sincerity of Twin Peaks; the silence of snow; the way Chris Thile ends a phrase, each last note holding the sour and strength of rye whiskey; my pupils forever growing wide in bookstores; all the theology I’m unlearning; the quiet itch of thoughtless words; my sense that God isn’t through with us.
We all need to live in one another’s light, with one another’s weather and music and sadness and know what we mean to each other.
All ambient to my world, all fashioned together for your sake. I bring you inside my anxiety and curiosity, then read you poetry. I play you records till we find a song we both like. You can peer as long as you like up and through the skylight, which is really just a tear in the ceiling. Then I send you off with whatever fumbled blessing I can manage.
Poet Tomas Tranströmer wrote “Each man is a half-open door leading to a room for everyone.” And God how we all need shelter—even if our makeshift sanctuaries suffer the same problems real houses do, with leaks and cracks and drafty corners. Some of what’s ambient keeps threatening to become symphonic, bending into threnodies for distinctly American tragedies.
So we keep building for us, for each other. Each sentence I write represents a prayer for you and its possible answer. We all need to live in one another’s light, with one another’s weather and music and sadness and know what we mean to each other. When whatever is ambient to another soul surrounds us and we shelter in place, we remember to forget about what’s killing us and cling to what makes us come alive together.
If I ever met Brian McBride or Adam Wiltzie, ever bumped into Phil Elverum, I’d keep it simple. A moment of eye contact, maybe a handshake, then assuredly a benediction.
Thanks for making room for me.
They would know what I meant. I hope my half-open door means something to you.
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