Saturday Sun — Nick Drake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXLWH2IAEN0

This, another song tied irrevocably to a summer and a place and a mood; I played this song on a grand piano in the empty main lounge of a hall in upstate New York; I imagined the campus in the 1960s; the vibraphones fit right in. The summer sunlight streaming in wide through the windows, and it had such mood, the perfect bildungsroman. It transcended era, it transcended angst or depression; I didn't care about Nick Drake's history. I cared about my own, and the song was a blank canvas for me to map out my life thus far on; to figure out who I was, what I wanted, where I was going.

This was the first song I ever recorded; on a friend's iPhone, with a good microphone. Sent online, bounced off an email server and played in secret, very late at night, for a confidential opinion.

Northern Sky — Nick Drake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11X5WljnFA

Like the Second Discourse, Nick Drake seems to be disillusioned with civilization; these songs are about nature and wildlife, about the sky and the seasons, about harvests and the days of the week and a simpler time, perhaps idyllic, perhaps idealized. The songs are folk, of course, and they are about magic and holiness in everyday life, focusing on the exceptional moments in a dreary life. They are confessional and strange and sad, but also deeply hopeful, happy and expectant and naive, Rousseau as a bard, linked for me with a week I spent in the suburbs, practically the country for me, reading (trying to read) Tolkien and listening to Nick Drake, reading a Greek language textbook, trying to imagine what it might be like to be just a little bit older.

Day is Done — Nick Drake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2jxjv0HkwM

Once, on the subway, I read sonnets over the shoulder of (presumably) a Columbia student. She was reading not from a book but off sheets of paper, and her hand was blocking the header, so I didn't know who had written it or what it was titled. Reading it, the sonnet was awful. It was bland and flowery, it meant nothing, it didn't evoke. And, reading it, I thought: why aren't sonnets as good as they once were?

Then she moved her hand, and uncovered the title: it was a sonnet by Shakespeare.

So I read it again. And on second reading, it was excellent. It had subtleties I'd missed, it had rhyme schemes that made sense given their age, it was brilliant. How could I have been so foolish the first time through?

So poetry is dated. Things are dated. I think that's what Day is Done is about. It's poetry, arranged and produced and recorded 44 years ago, and it still stands. I think that's the difference between pop and folk: pop is music in the present tense, but folk addresses human themes. Mortality was relevant in 1969, it's relevant in 2013, it'll be relevant in 2057. Pop rarely has that shelf life.

I discovered Nick Drake two summers ago, on a college campus, and the pastoral themes matched the new environment. I was reading pastoral horror literature and listening to pastoral music. The landscape up in Ithaca was pastoral, and it set this very clear two-month period, and Nick Drake is tied to that.