Ever wonder why spirits are so known for their whispers underneath the sounds of daily life?
Listen. Beneath the washing machine’s hum, far-off chanting fades like a bell tone. As soon as you’re aware of the sound, you realize it was never there.
Lower the lights or sit in the forest’s stillness and you can hear the whispering thrum increase. Animal pattering becomes a symphony: coyotes yipping, crows cawing, snakes undulating over leaves. Now you can hear a previously unnoticed layer of the atmosphere. Is someone singing that long, continuous note? Or does it somehow resonate from an incorporeal throat?
Could you be the bridge between those spirits and this forested world? You who vibrate with those same notes, gutteral to their ethereal. You aren’t sure who echoes whom.
Tell them a story without words, an aural painting. Call out again, they have heard. Now they respond. They understood.
Do you feel it building? The blended layers slowly distinguish themselves. Now, realize where you’re standing: in a chill wind, on some tree-covered plane perpendicular to ours. Which direction do you face to find the way back before the layers blend again?
—”Filgija Ear” by Heilung
Heilung is my new obsession. It’s like Dead Can Dance and some Vikings put on a concert where everyone is on some mysterious entheogen, and ancestral memories are getting dredged up in ways ordinary folks never dreamed were possible. Watch the live video below – it’s riveting.
From their site: “Heilung is sounds from the northern european iron age and viking period. We used everything from running water, human bones, reconstructed swords and shields up to ancient frame drums and bronze rings in the songs. The lyrics contain original texts from rune stones and preserved spear shafts, amulets and other artifacts. Furthermore poems, which either deal with historical events or are translations/ interpretations of the originals. Every attempt to link the music to modern political or religious points are pointless, since Heilung tries to connect the listener to the time before Christianity and its political offsprings raped and burned itself into the northern european mentality.”
Photo by Roksolana Zasiadko on Unsplash
