5. Mount Eerie - “Real Death”
This entire album was like stumbling into familiar room. There was an immediate intimacy to it, almost as if I was looking at my own memories through another lens, or at last hearing the confused and muddled emotions and experiences of my soul translated into a raw and poignant poetry that my thoughts could never manage to do proper justice. It was a simultaneously devastating and reassuring sensation, and I remember not being able to get enough of it. I would play it on repeat, like picking at a scar, finding solace and disruption within the masochism of the lyrics, much like the memory of a past hug, it was at once comforting and isolating. It was perfect, because anyone who has made it through the shadow of death, knows just how necessary the positive and the negative emotions can be. How they compliment, strengthen, and placate one another, and in doing so somehow find a way to fully honor the memory, doing it justice and helping one come to terms with what has passed.
As the opening song, this song sets the tone for the entire album, and it does so in a beautiful and relatable fashion. Although I lost a parent and not a romantic partner, the intersection between the two, or rather the universality of death, means that underlying experience remains more or less the same for everyone. All of us have to come to terms with what happened and somehow find a way to make sense of it. It’s a disorienting experience, like being robbed of all our senses and then trying to chart a course through unknown territory. No one is prepared for the impact and aftermath of loss felt within the private sphere of our mind, but what people are even less prepared for is how the sense of loss affects our interactions with the outside world. There’s almost a feeling of guilt that emerges from death, as if you’re afraid of passing on your darkness to others, or letting your aura of loss infect a situation and bring it down. It’s a perverse yet inevitable feeling, and the opening lines of this song capture that inner struggle perfectly. It’s the feeling of guilt that materializes within the peripheral whenever you start to talk about about your loss. It’s the sense of doubt that makes it feel as if your drumming up your pain or somehow playing the pity card, commodifying your loss or trying to ruin a moment and gain everyone’s attention by draping a big ‘ol sopping wet blanket of superficial and apologetic sadness over everyone involved.
It’s a problem that only becomes exaggerated when you’re someone who makes art for living. Being an artist means expressing the feelings, experiences, and thoughts that you encounter, and throughout the years Phil Elverum has never had a problem with this. In fact, he has always bared the joys and ails of his soul with striking clarity, candor, and poetry. However, his ails have never quite been so heavy and so striking as they are on this album. You can sense the same feeling of guilt that was previously mentioned, only for Phil this feeling is amplified. As an artist he knows that he will make money off of whatever he creates. He knows that he is taking something very personal, intimate, and sacred, and turning it into a product for others to consume, and knowing so, he’s caught within this nebulous realm of right and wrong. He want’s to do her memory justice. He wants to speak of all the subtle yet overwhelming observations. He wants to convey the feelings he’s been drowning within. He wants to accurately express the single most life-altering event that he’s ever experienced. And yet, at the same time he can’t help but feel that he’s doing something wrong. That he’s capitalizing on her death – or even worse, that he won’t be able to do the experience and the ensuing feelings justice. It’s the worry that he’s somehow not doing it correctly or failing her in some way or another. However, as Phil must have eventually realized while writing this album, as universal as grief is, it’s first and foremost, personal. There is no right or wrong. All that matters is what’s best for you – whatever helps you continue living through death.
