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Seek the light / ... my knees are cold.

Though I do not particularly subscribe to the notion that the divisions of calendar years really mean anything — for me, every day is just another day — I must admit to feeling somewhat relieved at seeing this one pass. 2008 has been a year of perpetual and cyclical conflict for me, both internal and external — a year in which I have found myself at the extremes of social extroversion and attempts at utter withdrawal from literally everyone around me.

Throughout the ups and downs, the expansion and contraction, and the noise and the silence of this year, there has been a constant sound in my mind and in my air — Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. It is all too appropriate that an album steeped in a rural Wisconsin Winter would tie in so tightly with an affliction of seasonal affective disorder that seemed to forget to wan with the change in seasons — I can identify all to well with the circumstances and sentiments that lie at its core, having felt as though my own early-year’s Winter never fully thawed to give way to Spring.

I crouch like a crow / contrasting the snow

On a frigid February day when I was stuck at home with the flu, catching up on skimming through music blogs; I stumbled upon a site which was streaming For Emma in its entirety. It struck me right away; the combination of these incredible songs and music with my delicate physical and psychological state rendered me useless to do anything but take it all in. After the initial listen, I played it three more times through, with each instance discovering additional intricacies within the quietly recorded layers. This is not an album made for listening, so much as it is an album made for absorbing.

Pour a little salt, we were never here

The songs of For Emma would be my soundtrack – my company – on a five-hour aimless walk through forgotten pockets of the city taking photographs on a silent Easter morning. On an interminable Summer night after a protracted conflict, at rest on the front porch and safe within the fortress of headphones. On a solitary day-long drive home from an escape to Florida. On too many nights after too many beers, drifting into sleep with the ethereally sung lyrics and ebowed guitars weaving into my subconscious.

Now all your love was wasted? / Then who the hell was I?

My experience with Bon Iver and For Emma was not complete with the record itself. I was fortunate enough to get the chance to see the band live twice – both times at the impossibly small Pilot Light in Knoxville, the first show coming less than three weeks after the album’s release. I’d heard some great reviews of the live show put on by this still-young band, but I was unprepared for the sheer power put forth by three seated guys who were just the opening act for their ear-splitting labelmates Black Mountain. They would enrapture a room packed with the normally fickle and loudly social Pilot Light crowd — drawing us in to sing along as one with the coda of “Wolves,” and muting every voice throughout the rest of the set with only the powerful beauty of their songs. They would, incredibly, part the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd to play the unamplified set-closer “Skinny Love” in the middle of the room. And when they were done they would simply retreat to the bar in the back of the room to enjoy the next set or a post-show beer with whomever was hanging out there.

What might have been lost don’t bother me.

Four months ago I stood inches from the headstock of Justin Vernon’s guitar as he played “Skinny Love” and I wept openly, feeling the flood of every possible emotion, every question and every fear wash over me in that sweltering room full of about 150 people. As I finish typing this tonight, I’m on the couch watching television; just a few minutes ago, Bon Iver performed the same song on Dave Letterman’s Late Show.

And so now a few million people just heard Bon Iver for the first time. I admit to having a brief jolt of fear as the song began that its impact would be suddenly diluted for me as it spread through the airwaves (and I suppose I can’t help but be subject, to a certain degree, to the rock-snob attitude that my favorite bands are for me only and too good for the rest of the world). But I find myself relieved and encouraged at the thought that it will resonate in similar ways for others. And I hope that Vernon, who’s just an incredibly humble dude in his mid-20s, has accomplished and exorcised everything he felt he needed to when he first wrote those songs. For me, they have at the very least carried me through a very difficult year and will always serve as a reminder of the ability of a strong set of songs to transcend their own existence and become an indelible part of the listener's life.

My 2008 top 11 albums
In alphabetical order, without any particular rank.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
The Dodos - Visiter
Hayden - In Field & Town
Islands - Arm’s Way
Kelley Stoltz - Circular Sounds
Liam Finn - I’ll Be Lightning
Matthew Loiacono - Kentucky
My Brightest Diamond - A Thousand Shark’s Teeth
Shearwater - Rook
Sigur Ros - Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere - Eskimo Hair

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