Audio: Mount Eerie – Real Death

Why share this much?  Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger,
about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love?  Our
little family bubble was so sacred for so long.  We carefully held it
behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music
selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced
times.  Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important.  
(I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.)  Then in May 2015
they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic,
and the ground opened up.  What matters now? we thought.  Then on July
9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore.  My internal
moments felt like public property.  The idea that I could have a self
or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea
leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver,
a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever.  I am open now, and these songs
poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and
watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their
house.  I make these songs and put them out into the world just to
multiply my voice saying that I love her.  I want it known.  

“Death Is Real” could be the name of this album.  These cold mechanics
of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an
alienating, detached sharpness.  But it is not the thing I want to
remember.  A crow did look at me.  There is an echo of Geneviève that
still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this
obliteration.  That’s why.

– Phil Elverum

Dec. 11th, 2016

Anacortes