The butcher, who is a man built like a houseboat with the countenance of a child unsure if he might have another treat, stopped Bon Iver today to ask him, meekly, about the inspiration for a particular song. I made myself comfortable, because I know that the answer is never simple.
Bon Iver explained. ‘It began with an abstract painting I saw in Morocco. The confident flow and varied shades of blue seemed to me to come from a painter who was exploring his ability to breathe, and this reminded me of a lunch I’d had once with a woodworker from Scandinavia, whose meal was interrupted every few seconds by deep pulls on a dented inhaler. Scandinavia itself is filled with such alien beauty, and I’d always wanted to travel there, and as I thought about this I remembered my father’s collection of maps, which he ruthlessly annotated with the same anarchic pleasure one uses to dog-ear a hardcover novel. Then I recalled my mother’s love of books and her visible pain whenever a book was abused: cracking its spine or hovering over it with a sandwich dripping with jelly - she would gasp. And that gasp, that rich intake of breath followed by silence, was like the sudden and vicious gales that would whoosh down the chimney in our cabin in Wisconsin when I was a child, which reminded me of the rough Pendleton park blanket I shivered beneath, its heavy weight pinning me to the sofa, and it was about this - this discrete type of comforting weight - that I wrote the song.’
The butcher, who stood stunned as Bon Iver gave this vivid confession, finally made a move to hand over our prosciutto. ‘Here,’ he said, unable to find any other words.
Bon Iver shared his winning smile, lightening the mood. ‘Also it’s about boats,’ he said inscrutably.
