Phil Elverum on Six of His Songs

Note: This article is a companion piece to Brandon Stosuy’s
interview with Phil Elverum, also in this issue.

I chose a handful of songs from Elverum’s oeuvre and asked him to write about them. I tried coming up with a mixed bag. He selected one, “Through the Trees,” from Wind’s Poem.

—Brandon Stosuy

1. “I Want Wind to Blow,” The Glow Pt. 2
I don’t remember what got me thinking about storms as a metaphor for emotional turmoil, but there were a bunch of songs on this theme. This one I remember writing, discovering the guitar line, sitting on the guest bed in my friend Mirah’s parents’ house outside Philadelphia in the fall of 2000 in the middle of a long tour. Life at home was confusing and stagnant and so “I want wind to blow.…” means “I want crazy events to happen to me. I’m tired of gray. Give me black or white.” Also, my hometown, Anacortes, is more exposed and more windy on its island than the basin holding Olympia, where I lived at the time. I missed home.

2. “The Dead of Night,” Dawn
This was during cabin time in Norway. I was just thinking about that term, “the dead of night,” and how Halloweeny it is. Also, I had some strange experiences waking up in the middle of those twenty-hour-long arctic nights and being confused and walking around the black cabin room. The song is about the idea of holding on to the memory of that mysterious black void while in the middle of the bright day. Yin-yang or whatever.

3. “Domesticated Dog,” Black Wooden Ceiling Opening
Riding in a rented minivan across Montana with Calvin Johnson and his mom in September 2006. It came out of nowhere. Perhaps the “sleeping giant” in the last verse came from those reclining-human-like Montana hills.

4. “Lost Wisdom,” Lost Wisdom (and, in different form, on Wind’s Poem)
Driving through northeast Oregon and Idaho alone in the middle of the night, thinking about what that Burzum song title could mean, without really even knowing the Burzum song at all. Thinking about how depressing it is that all we learn in our lives is lost and misunderstood by posterity no matter what. Also how even within our lives we quickly forget important lessons learned. Obliviousness v. clarity, repeatedly. I wrote it...