Dear You & Everyone Else,
Did you see it? The Northern Lights? A few nights ago, after 45 years of wanting to see them, they came to me! As usual, I cannot believe my good fortune. I hope you saw them too, and if you didn't, I am sure their light shined upon you.
And that maybe should be the end? That is sufficient? I have communicated to you about them? I have shown you the depth of my feeling for belonging to a world with a spectacle as grand as that? No, as usual, I have sounded like a car that passed with its radio on very loud, or maybe a sappy greeting cards' message. You might wonder, why do you do this? Why do you try to voice, to talk, to write, to think, to paint, to draw? And the answer is seeing the Aurora, but not seeing, so much as feeling it, and in feeling it, wanting you to witness it too. Because the enormity of it might feel less lonely that way.
Thinking all this, and of how to describe the Aurora to you, similar moments appeared: a raft on a river in the rain, a field of dried grass, an empty, open doored and windowed cabin with a pile of cottonwood fluff in the corner, a whoosh of bird wings overhead, a gray sea that shimmered out forever, a booth at a darkened bar; and these two songs. The first is a very pithy, plaintive version of what I am might be saying, and the second is so long, so repetitive, you might be droned into something like comprehension.
PS It isn't without risk, you know, to try to say something. I might, instead of reaching you, be repelling you with these whiney vocals and endless guitar riffs. I am always circling, beating about the bush, barking up trees that are wrong, and if I should, somehow, blindly hit the target, I will not know.
