He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms

Artist: A Silver Mt. Zion
Album: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms
Year: 2000

Seriously. Click the title link, enter a credit card number and wait for your music to arrive. Reserve yourself a seat at your own private listening party. Just you. Wake in the morning and make it a slow weekend morning. Make yourself some coffee or tea. Then hit play, go sit in your chair next to the window where shafts of light sometimes grace the corner of your room and watch your world outside wherever you are. Or, close your eyes and see imagery of that world come to you through the approach of distant violins or the gentle marching drums that guide them to you. What do you see behind your eyes when you hear the quiet piano? The one that you swear is coming to you from upstairs where the sad lonely ghost of a composer from ages past works her talent through her cold ethereal fingers.

What do you see?

What do you feel?

If you find out, I want to know...


What I see:
We all have seen it before. Really, this is not a new concept. I see images and clips of war, suffering, decay of all things natural and good whipping our minds at 30 frames per second. I see people cracked out and fighting amongst themselves in the alley behind my house. I see tons of debris washing ashore of the Great Lakes. I see the construction of a space shield to supposedly protect us from an atomic bomb. I see this type of message very necessary and well suited to the music that brings it. I certainly try to avoid dwelling on such atrocities but I find this album as a useful tool for a fairly healthy way of subjecting these things to me without killing me and also keeping me from letting them flush from my memory completely. Reserving a quiet corner of my brain for me to pull out every time I pray that we will someday get it and learn.

What I feel:
Oh, I love the title. I'll never know for sure, but if it were true, it would explain so much. God left this world long ago but left behind a shadow of the beauty for us to cling to. Like a shimmer of what we could have been. Something to chase to no avail.

When its all over; when this world is dead and the people on it have finished their turn by finally destroying everything, there will be millions of artifacts. Each little piece of us that we leave behind will be part of a story. A fable. A history of how we started, scattered, and grew to rise and fall. Every tiny speck of plastic and metal and bone will speak so quietly of how much potential we had and how much we squandered through war and greed. And which is more tragic? The fact that despite the potential we had, we wasted so much that we never deserved to continue to thrive? Or that a small number of us really were conscious of our capabilities but had too quiet a voice to reach the ignorant and stupid among us? Too few to make them see. Make them grok.

It won't matter. But one day, someone may find these things buried on our desolate rock we called home. Some distant intelligent race who'd understand the sadness because they succeeded where we failed. They were close. They came here. They found us in pieces and researched us. Saw our great beauty. Saw our great tragedy. If that may be so, then this piece of music is what I'd hope they find. Music to soundtrack the decay of our home. Music that they can use as a translation of a few of our final thoughts and emotions. Misguided and wasted away.


After your listening party, go out and ride your bike or go for ice cream and sit in a park. Trust me, you'll need it.