bon iver

Por detrás de uma grande obra de arte há sempre uma grande história para ser contada. Justin Vernon já gravava discos há vários anos, mas o mundo parecia estar sempre de costas voltadas para a sua música. Entretanto, rasteiras da vida, foi Justin quem decidiu virar costas ao mundo. Quando finalmente regressou, tudo foi diferente.

Justin Vernon deu lugar a Bon Iver, trazendo consigo o disco For Emma, Forever Ago, um disco que, de tão perfeito, parece ter existido desde sempre. Depois disso, Bon Iver já disponibilizou gratuitamente as suas MySpace Transmissions, com versões de temas retirados de For Emma, Forever Ago, onde o piano ganha terreno à guitarra. Já este ano, lançou o single Blood Bank, composto por quatro novos temas, deixando bem claro que este é realmente um nome a seguir com toda a atenção.

Deixo aqui um pequeno documentário que explica a história por detrás do grande disco de 2008 e ainda uma carta, escrita pelo próprio, durante o seu período de reclusão.

"i reallllllly think i am going out of my head sometimes.

im watching re-run marathons of sexual victims shows and shows about sex in the city, in a little barn house that my father built. He started in ‘79 and we just put in a toilet and a shower a couple of months ago. Im atleast 60 miles away from anyone I love, sometimes more like 1500. I am about 18 feet away from everything i love, however. Just up the poppel plank stairs, there is a pile of old guitars, a mound of microphones, wires, chords, electric boxes.

today, though I am taking a break from the previous 3 days of tirelessly working on an opus: seven songs that have succeeded to pull me through a hardened shell of myself, suprise me, entertain, impress and even heal me. They are me, and I am them, but, they sound nothing like I have ever really written before. No need to explain, I kind of understand.

So today, instead of sitting in the recording chair and working from basically when I wake up till 2 or 3 in the morning (just because nothing fills time better than that for me, except maybe for sitting with people) I woke up, ate a piece of toast with mom’s strawberry jelly, took a jog down the road and back, walked out to the woods to check on a deer carcass, ate a cheddarwurst cut up into pieces, watched a couple of these shows, teared up.

in the afternoon, i took some shit over to the town dump. I call it “town” but this is not a town. Its a township, and there are no garbage trucks or garbage men. I took two truck loads, and after driving back the second time I parked by the pull barn and hitched up the log splitter. I drove it down the road to an older couple that lives down the road.

Dick just quintuple bypass surgery but he helped me and Sharon split a large, huge pile of wood for about an hour. Sharon went lighting fast, carrying, stacking, picking up, putting down. It was cold, but I didn’t need gloves. At one point he left to sit down and the newly met strangers, Sharon and I, were a well oiled machine. It was loud, with the woodsplitter, so these new folks I offered to help with wood with, couldn’t really have a conversation to break the ice. Instead we just split and stack. Split and stack. There was this time when the hot exaust from briggs and statton was blowing on Sharons purple sweat pants and I could see the exact shape or her calf. It was just a metaphor for closley we were working together, with really having no idea about anything about eachother. touching hands as we hand off logs, unloading logs, logs that will heat thier home the rest of the winter. One of us farted. I don’t know who, she was moving to fast to notice.

i twitched a smile, but it didn’t even break our stride.

I was leaving in the truck, when I suddendly heard my self say “I feel good.” followed with the retort: “I feel great.” I punched on the cd player and, i know it seems unpoetic. Micheal Jackson’s solo version of “We are the World”.

It was strange being that close to the house of I was concieved in and not really thinking about it all that much. I don’t really know if it was Dick and Sharon that was living in the house at the time, about 25 yeras ago on a rainy summer night. And I don’t know if that gives more or less of an “in” asking Dick and Sharon if I could go in and see the room. ‘Cause, c’mon, who gets a chance to do that. 

My friends are a thousand miles away. I miss them. But here I am with re-run marathons and an opus. Im okay. Im doing okay."

Justin Vernon (January 3, 2007)