#mounteeire

Sitting in a rigid church pew, watching light adorn a high-ceilinged, painted cathedral. Halfway through the performance I have a couple realizations. I am surrounded by people who represent past lives I’ve led in Philadelphia, watching a person perform songs that deal largely with personal legacy, relationships, growth, and pain. I have not been to a Philadelphia church sanctuary since 2008. The cushion is uncomfortable and the memories are a little discomfiting as well. I’m constantly embarrassed when I remember my younger self, even if no one remembers me as an embarrassment. Art students who are still in their 20s, figuring out their niche in the downtrodden adult world, still practically able to ignore stimuli around them. Saw one person I knew who has experienced a great loss, an appropriate attendee. Ditto to my emo idol, Johm: A peripheral person in my life for over 10 years who I don’t know, kind of like P. Elverum himself. Aging punks who have a real reverence for the music being performed, and are perhaps more reverent because of how much psychotropics they consumed prior to the show. We discussed Watchmen, Chernobyl, Huppman, flaking out. Talking new media and local connections with these grown boys was as refreshing as an experience I could have hoped for given their level of glaze. 

Inevitably, being in this space carried me to times I have spent here. Hanging out with Aaron and a chattering Bradford Cox while his band looked on with loathing, hearing shoegaze synth erupt from a plexiglass box emanating blue light  -- “Cathedral - M83″, Nosferatu on Halloween in 2008 with pipe organ accompaniment. I thought a lot about my past Beat worship that has been polished by this point in my thirties. It served a purpose to keep me moving and looking for things buried in the grey world that can bring me a glimmer of light. That will hopefully persist in a way that is helpful. Is it crystallized the point where I can never lose it? On some levels it seems self-congratulatory, but that cheapens the joy I derive from these wistful moments. I bought his homemade release “Now Only” because it speaks the most to me about these feelings and features the songs that feel most like the crucially revisited entries in a diary. I could have left with three other records, and regret not picking up the latest but there is a lifetime for collecting relics of memory. Showing up alone to see what was an outward display of isolation and loneliness seemed appropriate enough to eat one of my $25 tickets. Also bringing a companion to an event like this stokes expectations I am not sure could be met. An encounter with the only person I knew would be in attendance at the merch table left me feeling more alone.

Karl Blau did a bunch of a cappella covers of songs, including Snow is Falling in Manhattan by Purple Mountains, a darkly beautiful song that reflected the evening’s theme of grief. His funny earnestness brought the room to warm crescendos of applause. 

Up to this point I have always had my personal expectations of what the mind behind Mount Eerie would be like in person. Equal parts boyish, thoughtful, grim, and fixated on everyday beauty, it is easy to follow the connections his music weaves through my mind. He should look like a small form, too small to sail a ship, yet striking out to sail it through the tumults ahead. I can picture myself as a child playing in the schoolyard of my elementary school, looking up at trees, lacking the willful desire to climb them, paralyzed by their infinity and beauty. Digging in the dirt to make clay, picking small stones to build some imagined palace for the future. My goals all seemed immediate and although I knew nothing of the vastness of the world, I still felt it lurking at the periphery. I felt that colossal jumble of personae, physical objects, renderings of human existence and played in spite of them. That is the closest I can get to pinpointing how I have felt listening to Phil’s music.

Phil’s voice and appearance has an innocence that belies his inner struggle. In person, behind the table selling his work, Phil himself seems unfit for his form. He is obviously torn between celebrity and reclusiveness, and a whole album of songs about breaking up with an A-list celebrity is what he has to show for it. I told him I looked forward to seeing his performance. His self-consciousness about the show didn’t seem to impact his performance, since craft like his seems to exist completely separately from the consequence of how he feels. I truthfully hadn’t listened to the record enough to recognize every song, but that is how I have enjoyed some of the more moving performances I’ve attended (e.g. Emily Haines, Miracle Fortress). The imagery woven by Phil and Julie included the affecting “Widows” which closes with a memory of the fledgling love that came before Phil and Michelle’s likely schism. The accompanying beauty was hearing the songs that acknowledge nothing about the world but its frank existence in contrast to being within a building built to praise a higher power. Phil’s message is clear: the universe is just an experience that we have, it is indifferent to how or what we feel about it. There are things that we cannot help but note: like a bonfire, the loss of contact (eternally) with the ones we love.