Breathe in your past life

Life often feels as though it lacks a purpose. As each person digs further into the chasm of adulthood, they’re apt to find despondency before they sniff a calling. Philosophies, in all their myriad interpretations of our fleeting existence, primarily serve to either confirm, deny or assuage our collective fear of the nothingness that pants warmly upon the bare flesh of our necks. In this chaotic sphere, a moments solace is hard to come by. Certainly, there are glimpses of meaning that hover in the corners of all successful art, but those results are so often born of conflict that the temporary reprieve they offer is fleeting at best. In truth perhaps the highest pursuit is to create something that can be breathed in, lived in. Often you’ll find that pieces like that are sequestered behind the clicking reels of a film forced to play second fiddle to a motion picture, or worse, lingering in the aisles of supermarkets and hotel lobbies. Ólafur Arnalds seems as though he would be relegated to these spaces, but be silent, breathe, linger in these moments and find, for a moment at least, a shimmering respite from the anxiety of daily life.

re:member is perhaps the most aptly titled album of the year. There’s a sense of security within its grooves—each note feels like a piece of your childhood, be it the jar of gumdrops your grandma pulled down from the fridge specifically for your visit, or the time you left your blanket in a motel while on a road trip. Nostalgic is probably the best word for it, and much like nostalgia, the record in itself is difficult to predict. On tracks like “unfold,” the sense of place and emotion flits between somber and triumphant. It sounds like playing around in the rain, at least it does for a while, then it just as quickly turns into getting rained out from what would’ve been a lovely day spent galoshing through the puddles.

Each of these tracks possesses a unique beauty that would be shameful to hear it behind anything else. As mentioned earlier, music such as this, the kind performed in concert halls with conductors waggling batons, often finds its popularity in the “best original score” portion of the Academy Awards. Such a shame it is that we have relegated entire genres to serve as backing portions for art that will, with time, eclipse its contributions to the greater work. The greatest shame though comes from never seeing the movie that we choose to play within the reel of our minds. Only your mind can pull forth the smell of freshly washed sheets and hot chocolate as thunder cracks outside your window on a summer day, or the taste of cream soda, a special treat you only got from your grandmother. Films can recall those memories, leave you to ponder them, but these songs take you there. When “they sink” plays, you remember moving across the country and saying goodbye to your friends one last time. When “ekki hugsa” comes on you, remember stepping out into the sunshine after the first showers of the summer. You are transported—not to some fantastical place that has never existed—but instead to a place you had long thought disappeared.

It’s hard not to feel untethered, a ship set adrift in a sea that neither knows nor cares about your presence on its waves. In time, we all may come to find our purpose or we may all find the abyss we feared in the dead of night. Whatever the case, there is something you are forgetting, some memory of a past you that, some time ago, was relegated to fade away in the far-off corners of your mind. re:member implores you to find those memories, that child, the person you had forgotten you could be, and hold them close. Because whether or not all of this means anything, that means something.