An Evening with Noah GUNDERSEN Two nights featuring unique,
stripped-down sets spanning Noah’s career. Night 1: Songs from
“Family”, “Ledges” and more. Night 2: Songs “Carry The
Ghost”, “White Noise” and more.
https://www.noahgundersenmusic.com/
[https://www.noahgundersenmusic.com/] on valentines day, 2019, i was
in bed with my girlfriend, in a hotel room in seattle, tripping on
mushrooms. i was showing her bits and pieces of the album in its then
unfinished form. at the time it was going to be called “i hope you
meet everything you fear.” i guess it still could be. but as i was
hearing the songs outside of my own ego, i began to see a pattern. or
more so a person. a boy. a boy who had tried really hard for a long
time to fill a space in his heart. a boy who didn’t know how to be
alone, but regardless spent most of his time floating in his own head.
a boy who really, really wanted to experience love — a majestic
love, an epic love. and in the end, a boy who didn’t have anything
to prove anymore. it’s been a challenging couple years for me.
i’ve had expectations shattered, relationships fail. i’ve felt the
mortality of my own body. i’ve been hurt and caused hurt. i’ve
spiraled into periods of substance abuse. but along the way i’ve
sidled up to myself. i’ve been able to look in the mirror with more
grace and be ok with who i see there, with all his flaws and
imperfections. some of these songs are very old. someone told me once
that songwriters are like prophets (though he said you should never
say that in an interview. sorry john). we’re meant to see things
that others can’t. sometimes those “others” are ourselves. there
are songs on this record that I wrote years ago, without really
grasping their meaning until now. my therapist says art is the self
talking to the self. i guess i was trying to get a message across,
cast out into the sea of songs like a message in a shipwrecked bottle.
i imagine this album as a sci-fi movie, where a man travels through
the infinite darkness of space, alone in his ship. he eventually goes
mad, is visited by some interstellar being of light who bestows on him
a revelation. he falls into a dream state and makes love with an angel
and is made whole for a moment. later he wakes up, alone in his
cockpit, with that sort of sad but beautiful certainty that comes from
accepting one’s aloneness. this record is deeply personal. it’s
about love, it’s about failure, it’s about drugs, it’s about
sex, it’s about age, it’s about regret, it’s about itself (very
meta, i know) and it’s about finding peace. i think it’s the most
i’ve ever put of myself into something. it’s been cathartic.
i’ve cried a lot. my close friend and producer andy park also poured
his soul into this record. we spent 2 years, mostly in his apartment,
carving away at it. sometimes it felt like we had poured a slab of
concrete, with the blind faith that somewhere inside was a beautiful
sculpture. this is just as much his record as it is mine. also
shoutout to his lovely girlfriend tess for letting me invade their
space constantly and making them miss game of thrones because of last
minute mix recalls. to all the people in these songs, i love you.
i’m sorry for the hurt i’ve caused. and to you, the listener, i
hope you find a space for this record. i hope it moves you. i hope
above all that it can remind you to be kind to yourself, to find
patience and grace. “I do not know what I may appear to the world,
but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the
seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of
truth lay all undiscovered before me.” – Isaac Newton
cinema
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29/05/2020 Last update