Stone teaches patience. A song that forgets that won’t last.
When I moved here to Bergslagen, I walked the old mine paths almost every day, trying to grasp the weight of this place. The ground here is full of iron and memory. It doesn’t give way easily. But it slowly gives back a rhythm that involuntarily settles into the body.
I started carrying a small notebook and writing down the shapes of things, not their names. A slag heap against a gray sky. The angle of a fence post. How light disappears down a mine shaft.
Later, at home, I read these notes and realized that some of them wanted to become music. Not all of them. Most never would. But those that did carried the stone within them. They were heavier than the songs I had written before. They took longer to sing. They demanded more from the listener.
That’s the kind of song I want to write. One that grows from the earth, not from nothing.