The Dark Is Rising

I can start to feel November's presence bearing down on me. Isaac's birthday was/ is the 23rd and the anniversary of his death comes a week later on the 30th. The first November after he died, November 2022, was awful, the anniversaries coming thick and fast and then going straight into December and everything that that month brings. Last year's November was no better and in some ways maybe worse. The passing of time, one year since he died, then two, and now, in November 2024, it will be three years. In some ways it doesn't seem feasible that it can already be three years since he was last with us but time keeps marching on and he slips a little further into the past every day, getting further away in little ways all the time. Three years on I can think of him and smile now which hasn't always been the case in the time since he died- sometimes it was impossible to think of him and it not be painful so I guess that's some kind of progress- but I'm not looking forward to November and can feel it already casting a shadow. 

In September 1998 Mercury Rev released an album which completely changed their world- Deserter's Songs. Coincidentally this was just two months before Isaac was born. Deserter's Songs was the group's fourth album but it brought them success and renown they'd never had before, an album of perfectly played and sung songs that mixed end of the century fragilities and anxieties, the Catskills mountains, whispered psychedelic poetry, the old weird America that Bob Dylan and Greil Marcus talked about, and baroque chamber pop, made by a group recovering from breakdowns, addiction and break ups. It was a rebirth and is one of those albums that never seems to age or fade or lose its power and appeal. 

In 2001 Mercury Rev followed Deserter's Songs with All Is Dream, a less fragile and more confident record but one still shot through with a certain amount of dread. It opens with The Dark Is Rising, a song that sets out like a 1950s Hollywood blockbuster with huge sweeping strings and then lonely piano. Jonathan Donahue starts singing in that reedy, upper register voice about dreams and loss and bridges burned. The Dark Is Rising is about a lover who has gone but Jonathan has a kind of certainty in the song, he welcomes the darkness because he can hear them, 'somewhere in this song'. The strings and timpani crash back in and a ghostly voice wails away in the background. It's strong stuff- I recall listening to it in 2001 and being quite freaked out by it. 

The Dark Is Rising

The last verse goes like this-

'I dreamed that I was walking and the two of us were talking/ Of all life's mystery/ The words that flow between friends/ Winding streams without end/ I wanted you to see

But it can seem surprising/ When you find yourself alone
And now the dark is rising/ And a brand new moon is born

I always dreamed I'd love you/ I never dreamed I'd lose you/ In my dreams I'm always strong'

My dreams have been all over the place for a long time now, made more vivid and disturbed by the statins I've been taking for over a year now. Isaac has been appearing more and more regularly in them. After he died, when he appeared in my dreams he was always 23, the age he was when he died. Now when I dream about him he's often much younger. I don't what that means or if it means anything. I'm not sure what The Dark Is Rising means for me either but its been playing in my mind a lot as September has turned into October and November has begun to show its face. And as Jonathan sings in The Dark Is Rising, 'dreams don't last for long'.