“The things we need to say
Have been said already anyway
By parallelograms of light
On walls that we repainted white”
I met my bandmates in a mid-sized midwestern city by going to an open-mic near the campus of the state school that essentially drives our local economy through some combination of football and healthcare. I learned how to share songs and listen well, talk too much and settle down, and make a few friends. Jason was the host at the time, never far from a glass of red wine, and traditionally starting off the night with some fingerpicked folk. He played a Weakerthans cover somewhat often which took me probably over a year to figure out wasn’t his own song. It was just a gorgeous song that he played beautifully.
I found other songs by The Weakerthans after I got used to them sounding closer to The Hold Steady than Sufjan Stevens, which is sort of how it sounded when Jason played them (again, beautifully). This one always struck me. At a time when I and my friends were orbiting around campus from dorm to apartment to duplex in all sorts of roommate arrangements, I found some peace in packing my things into boxes, knowing that everything that I had could be distilled into something concrete. And the rooms left behind were sad but lovely. I always imagined that I had to say goodbye to songs that were left in that room that never got written, but hoped that other people might move in, find them, write them, and bring them to the world.
The song shares a title with an Edward Hopper painting from 1963. It’s an oil painting of sunlight hitting the walls and floors after streaming through a window. There aren’t any characters or people in it, but the light fills up the space. It makes me feel like I’m in my early twenties, starting to think I could figure it out some day. Maybe I would have time once I moved into the next 9-12 month lease.
I’m sharing a cover of this song this week from my orange couch, but I also cut a video using Hopper’s artwork paired with the song. I hope it finds you well.
Sam + Hello Emerson