“Surely, you must know you made something beautiful tonight,” she says.
We are standing on the stone steps of a barn structure in Molkom, Sweden. It’s just after we’ve finished, and people are lingering. On my way back into the building to tear down, I pass a knot of people and conversation ensues. They reach, as usual, for language to describe what they heard.
“I don’t know about that,” I tell them. “Jenkinson and I do have a better idea about what it is we have than we did 8 years ago…or maybe even last year. But, I’ve had a long-standing pursuit: I’ve always wanted to make something inarguably beautiful. Just once”
Inarguably beautiful.
I know…it’s foolish in so many ways. But I think the hunt for it is partly what keeps me trying to make things. It can sound like a gambling addiction: just one more hand, just one more throw of the dice, just one more yank on the slot arm…just one more try. The tricky thing is, you can’t want something to be beautiful. It seems your allegiance has to be to something else, and the beauty—if there is any—is a by-product of that allegiance.
“We can never see the Night the way that you just saw it,“ I say. “We can never have that experience. There are echoes we get from time to time, but mostly we have to be content with being in the teeth of the thing, which a distinctly different vantage point than yours.”
Just then, I’m distracted by a melody. Voices coming through the open windows of the second floor of the converted barn we just played. The many voices are in unison and they are, unbelievably, singing the chorus of “Carry Me”, which we did for an encore. Sound travels different at night, and this impromptu choir falls like fog out the windows to the ground, surrounds me drenched in darkness and the cool snap from the North Atlantic. They are properly keening, an on-the-knees plea for a temporary truce with going it alone:
Carry me/ Carry me/ All I’ve ever wanted was someone/ To carry me.
I’m bounding up the stairs now to see if what I hear is real. I’m met on those stairs by people streaming out of the room, singing to me as we pass. Now I’m in the room, and I walk across the stage and find something to lean against. I marvel at the sight and sound. I’m not being watched. I’m the watcher.
This is inarguably beautiful, I think to myself.
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Gregory Hoskins 