Bon Iver: SABLE, fABLE
I’ve been tending towards nostalgia with music of late. Even in my sporadic writing about the music that’s been soundtracking my life, I’ve been thinking about the past more than usual. If I were to psychoanalyse myself, explain why – soundtracked by Bon Iver’s latest offering: a brilliant record, deliciously balanced between organic and manufactured, a sort of sonic midpoint between the self-titled debut and 22, A Million – I could find a few culprits.
But first, this website is going to be split in two. Stranger Fiction remains the music, art & culture magazine. In fact, now that it’s clear that the stuff more specific to topics of growth (self and other kinds, including product) goes elsewhere (on Substack), it’s likely that Stranger Fiction is more of a music, art, and culture magazine than what it became over the last few years – as it meandered from topic to abandoned topic. I won’t apologise: I was only trying to find my way to where I am today. (Something about which I’m currently reading in Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments. All realisations, if any, about growth that follow from that reading won’t be found on Stranger Fiction; they’ll be found on Akhil’s a Stranger.) You will receive emails when I post these articles on Akhil’s a Stranger. Please unsubscribe if you do not want to receive those emails.
Back to the subject of nostalgia. Over and over, I’ve written about my nostalgia for the 3 am music club. Bon Iver, however, inspires a different kind of nostalgia; for moments not shared with others but experienced alone. Bon Iver triggers a very specific kind of memory for the music nerd in me – and likely for completists of the specific brand of ‘indie’ that was blooming through the late noughties and early tens. For those that drew a straight line from the National’s Boxer to Death From Above 1979’s The Physical World, before the nine-to-five shifted preoccupations from FLACs to PDFs. Before everything had this faint aftertaste of seriousness. Back when you were free to fall in and out of love without worrying if things will ever work out for you in the romance department. Back when you were free to be curious about how Urdu is written or how A.R. Rahman composed Roja without worrying about the impact this curiosity would have on your grade in Mass Transfer Operations. Back when you were free to begin a late night viewing of When Harry Met Sally or In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones or Aguirre: the Wrath of God armed with nothing but taxpayer-subsidised aloo parathas from the hostel canteen. Not even an internet connection post-midnight thanks to an ass-backwards ruling that went back to the time the institute’s board was foolish enough to nominate the misanthrope who would go on to fail you in that Mass Transfer Operations course to the post of Dean of Student Affairs.
Back when things were a little more… shall we say, loosey-goosey.
Bon Iver disappeared from my life around when I learned what the exercise price of an employee stock option was. It was as if the idea of skinny love was incompatible with the idea of fair market value. It’s one or the other, it would seem. Of all the records that followed For Emma, Forever Ago, the only one that broke into rotation for me was 22, A Million. 33 "GOD", from the record, remains a favourite. But, for all intents and purposes, Bon Iver disappeared from my life, right about when I lost my innocence. It’s the sort of experience out of which that brand of “indie” artist would’ve made a great song. I can hear it: Sufjan Stevens, Peoria or something like that.
I’m trying to rediscover a certain innocence. A certain kind of romance I once had in small quantities before losing it entirely. For me, it’s a wonderful time for Bon Iver to release a new record. Maybe I can find a way to a more significant curiosity than I ever had. Maybe this time it’ll soundtrack not nostalgia for mornings gone by, but a thorough enjoyment of this blazing hot afternoon.
