Monday, April 1, 2013

"We Can Be Ghosts Now" by Hiatus

"Meet me in the dust cloud... Meet me in the white light."
By Hiatus featuring Shura.

The video is lovely but the song has really snuck up on me... shimmering, tender, bittersweet, powerful. The golden, glittering combination of the chimes and mandolin as a backdrop for Shura's murmurings is just...just...oh... *swoon.*



I just can't let this song go. It is moving me to my core, and after finding out more about it, I can finally feel why. The artist Hiatus, whose real name is Cyrus Shahrad, wrote the lyrics with the tragedy of 9/11 in mind.

“I’ve been returning to the subject of September 11th in my writing and my music since the event itself,” he says. “Trying to artistically represent the scale of that day’s destruction is futile given the wealth of documentary footage, which is too powerful to allow for creative interpretation. But I do think there’s a place for exploring the human stories that unfolded in the dust cloud, especially those guided by love on a day remembered largely as an act of overwhelming hate.”

Vocalist Shura remarks, “I remember when Cyrus first played me the 20-second loop that eventually became the track,” she says. “Even then I was haunted by this hypnotic beat and the sense of something altogether more mournful at its core. It’s a song as sparse as it is rich, and the imagery of those two former lovers, now leading separate lives, finding each other again amid the chaos and collapse of everything they once knew… that’s something I find irrevocably moving.”

The lines "Meet me in the dust cloud" and "Meet me in the white light" are all the more shattering with this knowledge. Stunningly powerful and moving.

Wow.


Bury everything you own
On a hill in Peckham Rye
Say a prayer for those you’ve known
As trace of fire scars the sky

A heaven of abandoned stars
River running black and red
Fight your way through crowds and cars
As rockets flower overhead

Meet me in the dust cloud
As The Towers tumble all around
We can be ghosts now
We don’t ever have to make a sound

Meet me in the white light
As the city slowly lifts away
We can be a ghost now
With the memory of another day

Meet me in the white light,
in the white light now…


http://soundcloud.com/hiatus
https://www.facebook.com/hiatusmusic

10 comments:

Nicole said...

Wow. So intense. I like his focus on the human stories, the individual stories that came out of that tragedy.

The only way to make any kind of sense of an event like that, or any art, as he says, is to bring it down to the small, personal things. That makes it digestible. I don't know that it will ever be understandable, but this kind of approach helps.

Anonymous said...

This song has haunted me for the last months too. Hope you don´t mind I took half yor post for my latest post. Thanks for sharing.

Jeff said...

Hi kurazaybo,

Thanks for the link back to my post about this amazing song. Every time I listen to it, I get chills all over again.

Best,
JEF

Anonymous said...

Thank you :)



xxx

Jeff said...

Hey Anonymous,

You are welcome. I love sharing poignant, meaningful posts with folks. And this song STILL haunts me... glad you enjoy it too.

Thanks for reading.

Best,
JEF

iMan said...

this song grew on me... thanks so much for sharing this.
i suggest a couple of minor corrections in the lyrics: "trace of fire scars the skies" and "towers tumble all around".
thank you so much

Jeff said...

Thanks iMan, you have brilliant ears! Changes make absolute sense and have been made.

JEF

Unknown said...

Wow, it's incredible to find out I'm not the only one who can't stop listening to this song. This post was written a while back, so I guess I'm late to the party. I randomly discovered the song on Apple Music one night while listening to a playlist and it immediately stuck out to me. I've found myself wanting to listen to it every day since. Crazy. So glad I came across this explanation behind the lyrics. I don't even know where to begin to explain the feeling. The song is just out of this world beautiful

Jeff said...

Hi Marko,

Thanks for dropping by and for the comment. We must be kindred souls if this music is touching you the way it touches me... I agree, it is out of this world beautiful.

Thanks,
JEF

leahmaglaras said...

I found this song in January. I felt exactly the same. As I dug deeper into the meaning I was in tears when I read that it was about sept 11.

Beautiful song, sounds and voice.