#23 - the moon
I.
In I Spoke With A Fish, a song off Mount Eerie’s sprawling new record Night Palace, Phil Elverum sings, “recorded music is a statue of a waterfall.” The same night I listened to the record, and heard the song, a friend texted me the lyric while at a jazz festival. I’ve had the words on my mind countless times since: watching shows, seeing my friends perform, sitting atop a hill in Granada, overlooking the remnants of Al-Andalus as the locals joyfully collaborated: singing, playing guitar, clapping, harmonizing. I think I first texted the lyric back while listening to my friend Julia D’Angelo live. She just put out a beautiful EP called “Collector”.
I saw Phil Elverum in Brooklyn recently, and told him I loved how his humor shows on Night Palace. I was thinking of I Spoke With A Fish primarily, which has some of the most beautiful, and funniest, moments on the record.
Phil Elverum’s abundant discography isn’t exactly known for its humor, though maybe it could be. The last Mount Eerie song I referenced in this newsletter was Real Death, off the gutting A Crow Looked at Me, written following the death of Phil’s wife Geneviève Castrée. I remember my first listen to that record so vividly. I decided to go on a rare walk around Al Satwa neighborhood in Dubai in early 2021 and randomly put it on for the first time. The album opener, Real Death, quickly cemented the listening experience as it started with the slowly crushing lines: “Death is real, someone’s there and then they’re not, and it’s not for singing about, it’s not for making into art.”
II.
Two weeks ago I woke up to a text from a childhood friend who knows my family, saying she’s very sorry for my loss, immediately panicking. Time differences can be particularly cruel in the mornings. I quickly checked my notifications and learned that a family member had passed away (الله يرحمه).
It was heartbreaking, but the even bigger shock was over a year ago, in November 2023, when I learned that the same relative, a relatively young, seemingly healthy doctor, had a sudden stroke on the job, entering a coma that cost him much of his brain and bodily functions. I cried on the phone with my mom and got off the phone and cried again, my tears interrupted by a student walking in for my Political Theory office hours. Just days before, a different student of mine had seen me bawling my eyes out on the street, minutes after I heard the news that a dear friend’s relatives in Gaza were killed, some still buried under the rubble. She later showed up to office hours with a home cooked meal based off her grandmother’s recipe, an act of kindness I still hold close.
There have been many moments where I’ve reminded myself, and others, that pain and grief do not exist in relative or quantifiable terms. But the reality remains that it is difficult to perceive any event outside the context of the holocaust we are helplessly watching unfold. Personal grief, loss, and pain, and particularly the expression thereof, are no exception.
I spent today stressing over news of serious and very significant damage to my apartment in New York. (If you have a free room in Brooklyn this January, let me know.) I kept remembering that millions in Gaza have had their homes, neighborhoods, and entire cities demolished. I opened Instagram at the end of the day and saw the last picture of Dr. Abu Safiya, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, facing the military tanks that abducted him following the siege, destruction, and burning of the hospital, and the murder of its patients.
There have been many moments where I’ve reminded myself, and others, of something something about relative or something terms. I often don’t know what that means.
III.
Two weeks ago I woke up to a text from a childhood friend […] and learned that a family member had passed away (الله يرحمه). Real Death, of course, quickly came to mind. I had a heavy morning, cancelled some plans, then grabbed food with a friend in the neighborhood in the afternoon. I got my glasses fixed, spent time at the bookstore nearby, and headed to another friend’s class showcase.
On the walk over, I looked up, and was, for the nth time, totally overtaken by the beauty of a full moon. I excitedly pointed it out, and told my friend that the next newsletter will be of moon songs. (Though this playlist, like many others, has existed for months, gradually growing in the background.)
I took my phone out to take a picture, thinking I’d add it here, but you know how it is; a photo of the moon is, too, a statue of a waterfall.
IV.
That day I listened to Night Palace and first heard that line, I’d spontaneously decided to make my first trip to the Ridgewood Reservoir, and spend the two hours before sunset listening to the new record for the first time, skating, and reading in nature, where Night Palace is immersed. A reservoir was certainly the right setting, and the album the right soundtrack for carefully taking it in. One of my favorite songs on the record is Non-Metaphorical Decolonization, a more clearly political track about colonialism and genocide, that fits just right alongside songs about crows, fish, rain, and wind, because their essence is the same.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to process personal struggles and celebrations alike, of all sorts of scales, amidst genocide, though I’ve been unwaveringly clear on the need to continuously center and direct attention towards the catastrophe in Gaza. I’m learning that a healthy heart is one that is broken to pieces, over and over, by scenes of genocide, but a healthy heart will, and must, still struggle with personal & communal difficulties, regardless of scale, and sometimes be overtaken by the beauty of a full moon. Amidst contextualizing and placing things in perspective, amidst continuing to learn to live and fight at the same time, I remind myself that it is the awe of a reservoir that moves you towards decolonization, the rage against injustice that pushes you to love and care and take in your surroundings more delicately. Elverum’s discography often reminds me of this, where devastating songs about death and grief are born out of deep love and connection, where songs about decolonization are born out of a profound appreciation for and observation of people and planet.
V.
This is a playlist of songs with all sorts of references to the moon. It opens with Hamza Namira’s Konna Wehna Soghar (When We Were Young), which I’ve loved for a very long time, and reminisces over being younger and more appreciative of the moon.
The Moon, both tender and massive, is off another Phil Elverum project, The Microphones. I Saw The Moon is a track I first heard live and the words “I don’t think it’s weak if I feel something new, because I saw the moon in the mid-afternoon” have echoed in my mind on many moon sightings since. I had to have a song from one of my favorite records of 2024 before the end of the year, MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks. Silly is off dear Julia’s aforementioned EP “Collector”, and does in fact have moon references, but I would’ve found an excuse to put one of her songs on here anyway.
Gamar, a fun, sarcastic, and metaphorical banger with some of the realist scream-along lyrics about occupation is one that always brings me back to life. Just ask anyone who’s seen me at Lava Shawerma when I walk in defeated, depleted, particularly post-protest, and Egyptian staffer Marwan puts on that playlist. Approximately translated, 47SOUL asks: you’ve walked on the moon; what more do you want walking in our neighborhoods?
Here’s to kicking them out of our neighborhoods, and looking at the moon from right here, wherever that may be. Happy new year, friends, and free Palestine.
10 songs
Konna Wehna Soghar - Hamza Namira
I Saw the Moon - Peach Fuzz
Silly - Julia D’Angelo
La Lune - Billie Marten
Moon Begins - Florist
Harvest Moon - Neil Young
The Moon - The Microphones
Marquee Moon - Television
Gamar - 47SOUL
Bark At The Moon - MJ Lenderman