Soria Moria - Mount Eerie

[00:02.02]Slow pulsing red tower lights
[00:10.66]Across a distance, refuge in the dust
[00:18.04]All my life I can remember longing
[00:26.31]Looking across the water and seeing lights
[00:32.36]When I was five or six, we were camping in the islands in July
[00:38.60]The tall yellow grass and the rose hips fragrant
[00:43.38]After sunset, island beyond island
[00:48.87]Undulating and familiar, not far from home
[00:54.31]With my fragrant, whittled, cedared driftwood dagger
[00:58.63]In the mildew canvas tent
[01:01.30]I saw fireworks many miles away but didn't hear them
[01:06.69]And I felt a longing, a childish melancholy
[01:11.40]And then I went to sleep
[01:13.90]And the aching was buried, dreaming, aging
[01:19.74]Reaching for an idea of somewhere other than this place
[01:25.01]That could fold me in clouded yearning
[01:30.00]For nowhere actually reachable, the distance was the point
[01:45.63]And then when I was twenty-four
[01:48.27]I followed this ache to an Arctic Norwegian cabin
[01:53.95]Where I said \"**** the world\" in a finally satisfying way
[01:59.95]I stayed through the winter and emerged as an adult
[02:04.12]Holding a letter from you, an invitation
[02:08.82]So I flew back and drove back
[02:11.74]And when we met in person it was instant
[02:18.40]It didn't matter where we lived as long as we were together
[02:23.22]And that was really true for thirteen years
[02:28.20]And the whole time still
[02:34.74]Slow pulsing red tower lights
[02:44.27]Across a distance, refuge in the dust
[02:56.09]In January, you were alive still
[03:00.20]But chemo had ravaged and transformed your porcelain into some other thing
[03:07.10]Something jaundiced and ******
[03:10.47]They put you in the hospital in Everett
[03:13.40]So I gave the baby away and drove up and down I-5 every night
[03:20.56]Like a satellite bringing you food that you wanted
[03:25.42]Returning at night to sleep in our bed, cold
[03:32.32]I went back to feel alone there
[03:37.14]All past selves and future possibilities on hold
[03:41.76]Well I tore through the dark on the freeway
[03:46.20]The old yearning burning in me
[03:55.12]I knew exactly where the road bent around
[04:00.12]Where the trees opened up and I could see
[04:05.36]Way above the horizon, beyond innumerable islands
[04:20.32]The towers on top of the mountain lit up slowly, silently beaconing
[04:27.32]As if to say \"just keep going
[04:35.93]There is a place where a wind could erase this for you
[04:43.24]And the branches could white noise you back awake\"
[04:49.93]So I went back to feel alone there but cradled you in me
[05:06.22]In the National Gallery in Oslo
[05:10.21]There's a painting called Soria Moria
[05:15.09]A kid looks across a deep canyon of fog
[05:18.97]At a lit up inhuman castle or something
[05:32.58]I have not stopped looking across the water
[05:36.41]From the few difficult spots where you can see
[05:41.39]That the distance from this haunted house
[05:44.57]Where I lived to Soria Moria is a real traversable space
[05:54.86]I'm an arrow now
[05:59.17]Mid-air
[06:06.27]Slow pulsing red tower lights
[06:13.33]Across a distance, refuge in the dust