Music Therapy: Nantes by Beirut

A note before we begin. Every month that passes, I find myself falling ever deeper in love with this band. This music is my muse for every season, mixing in as the light grows and fades. This young man (Zach Condon) is but 23 years old and has blended the rhythms and brass expletives of Balkan folk music with poetic lyrics and the sweet approachability of Western pop. If you have never heard Beirut's music and know yourself to be at least a little bit of a gypsy, then you must listen. It will be like going home.

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This is the busy way that insects scuttle over the ground, antennae conducting the rhythmic clacking of mandibles, the sheen of a hundred black husks like volcanic stones come to life. This is ghosts waltzing over their own graves, the mist mingling where longing once churned in their guts. Their feet dancing through the flowers that lay wilting beneath their names, they sway in the gentle forgetting of death.

This is the clatter of cutlery on the breakfast table, the half-glass of orange juice forever turning its cheek to the onslaught of fork tongs and the serrated tongues of butter knives. The spoon has miscarried. The jam jar is empty. The breeze catches the edge of the faded tablecloth, revealing an under-skin as bright as the sun, a reminder that things change, things remain the same.

The day you round the corner and see your old friend, the one you thought you had lost forever, do not stand too long in a trance before reaching out and touching his face. In this way, remind yourself what is real before taking off again into the trees, where the leaves go on birthing and dying with the seasons, despite all your silent wishes to hold them still.

Remember that even if you could fold up all the buildings in the world like a child closing a pop-up book, the horizon would still find its way of escaping you. So while you clamour over the landscape, past the gardens and the forgotten fences, let the clutter in your mind rebuild the scene. This exquisite, dishevelled ensemble. This small fire in the night.