The first time I heard Iron & Wine, I was riding at night in someone’s rented white van, heading to the Nevada desert. Since then the music of Sam Beam has had a tendency to work best with me in the dark, and it’s our music of choice if we’re traveling by night.

This is the only Iron & Wine song I know how to play. I heard it for the first time last weekend, fell in love, and learned it over the course of the week. The image of a house burning down before your eyes really resonates with me right now. Our house isn’t burning in the literal sense, but we are packing up and moving for the first time in seven years. Boxes, chaos, memories. Excitement and worry. That strange otherness, the feeling of being outside your routine, of being in fact outside yourself, as though watching your body from the side, as in a dream. That’s what I tried to weave into my interpretation of Sam Beam’s breathy, amazing song.

I have one more song to record for the Fractal Foundation and then I’m taking apart my studio. It feels like the end of something wonderful.
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