Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup - Mount Eerie.mp3

[00:15.130]I know no one now
[00:22.170]Now I say you
[00:33.540]Now after the ground has opened up
[00:38.570]Now after you died
[00:42.150]I wonder what could beacon me forward into the rest of life
[00:55.190]I can glimpse occasional moments
[01:00.200]Gleaming like bonfires burning from across the fjord
[01:23.150]In a painting from around 1915 called Midsummer Eve bonfire by Nicolai Astrup
[01:30.740]That shines on my computer screen in 2017 in the awful July night
[01:39.630]The house is finally quiet and still with the child asleep upstairs
[01:45.140]So I sit and notice the painting of bonfires on the hillside
[01:49.510]And hanging smoke in the valleys
[01:59.450]Wrapping back up through the fjords at dusk
[02:02.890]Hovering like scars of mist draped along the ridges
[02:09.060]Of couples dancing in the green twilight around fires
[02:15.360]And in the water below the reflections of other fires from other parties
[02:21.440]Illuminate the depths and glitter shining and alone
[02:32.640]Everyone is laughing and there is music
[02:35.550]And a man climbs up the hill pulling
[02:37.940]A juniper down to throw into the fire
[02:41.920]To make some sparks rise up to join the stars
[02:46.600]These people in the painting believed in magic and earth
[02:50.810]And they all knew loss
[02:55.190]And they all came to the fire
[02:59.570]I saw myself in this one young woman in the foreground
[03:10.950]With a look of desolation and a body that looked pregnant
[03:14.880]As she leaned against the moss of a rock soft to the side
[03:19.550]Apart from all the people celebrating midsummer
[03:23.580]I knew her person was gone just like me
[03:28.100]And just like me she looked across at the fires from far away
[03:32.490]And wanted something in their light to say
[03:35.160]Live your life and if you don't
[03:43.830]The ground is definitely ready at any moment to open up again
[03:50.620]To swallow you back in
[03:52.750]To digest you back into something useful for somebody
[03:59.500]And meanwhile above the Norwegians dancing in the twilight
[04:05.320]The permanent white snow gleamed
[04:09.340]You used to call me Neige éternelle
[04:19.340]The man who painted this girl's big black eyes gazing
[04:23.370]Drawing the fire into ourselves standing alone
[04:27.630]Nikolai Astrup he also died young at 47
[04:34.390]Right after finishing building his studio at home
[04:39.060]Where he probably intended to keep on painting his resonant life into old age
[04:45.460]But sometimes people get killed before they get to finish
[04:50.160]All the things they were going to do
[04:57.540]That's why I'm not waiting around anymore
[05:03.690]That's why I tell you that I love you
[05:13.400]Does it even matter what we leave behind
[05:17.930]I'm flying on an airplane over the Grand Canyon
[05:22.050]Imagining strangers going through the wreckage of this flight if it were to crash
[05:30.640]And would anyone notice or care gathering up my stuff from the desert below
[05:37.710]Would they investigate the last song I was listening to
[05:42.270]Would they go through my phone and see the last picture I ever took
[05:45.990]Was of our sleeping daughter early this morning
[05:49.890]Getting ready to go and I was struck by her face
[05:53.840]Sweet in the blue light of our dim room
[05:59.230]Would they follow the thread back and find her there
[06:09.350]I snapped back out of this plane crash fantasy still alive
[06:14.540]And I know that's not how it would go
[06:17.370]I know the actual mess that death leaves behind
[06:21.840]It just gets bulldozed in a panic by the living pushed over the waterfall
[06:29.770]Because that's me now holding all your things
[06:35.160]Resisting the inevitable flooding of the archives
[06:42.700]The scraps distributed by wind
[06:46.060]A life's work just left out in the rain
[06:51.380]But I'm doing what I can to reassemble a poor substitute version of you
[06:57.950]Made of the fragments and drawings that you left behind
[07:02.150]I go though your diaries and notebooks at night
[07:08.550]I'm still cradling you in me
[07:28.310]There's another Nicolai Astrup painting from 1920
[07:34.250]Called foxgloves that hangs on the fridge
[07:37.410]And I look at it every morning and every night before bed
[07:46.260]Some trees have been cut down next to a stream
[07:49.440]Flowing through a birch brow in late spring
[07:54.440]And two girls that look like you gather berries and baskets
[07:59.470]Hunched over like young animals grazing
[08:03.220]With their red dresses against the white birch three trunks interweaving
[08:09.920]Beneath the cluttering leaves
[08:12.600]The three stumps in the foreground remind me that everything is fleeting
[08:18.900]As if reminding is what I need
[08:23.550]But then the foxgloves grow
[08:25.750]And I read that the first flowers that return to disturbed ground
[08:32.160]Like where logging took place
[08:34.550]Or where someone like me rolled around wailing in a clearing
[08:43.320]Now I don't wonder anymore
[08:48.210]If it's significant that all these foxgloves spring up
[08:53.100]On the place where I'm about to build our house
[08:57.100]And go to live in let you fade in the night air
[09:02.570]Surviving with what dust is left of you here
[09:09.410]Now you will recede into the paintings