Here’s a weird fact about me that will probably make you think I’m totally strange:
There’s a specific staircase at my place of work which, every time I climb it, makes a song begin playing in my head. Makes it play so insistently that I often find myself humming or whistling it as I ascend.
Other staircases? Nope. Coming down that same staircase? Nothing. It’s only the one staircase, and only on the way up.
And to make things ultra-weird: it’s a song that doesn’t exist. I mean, it exists inasmuch as I made it up, but it’s not an actual song that a real band recorded, just one that lives in my head and emerges whenever I climb this one particular staircase. It’s been this way for 15 years.
If you’re raising one eyebrow and slowly pushing your device away from you, fair enough. It’s strange.
But if that fact doesn’t weird you out, chances are good that you might like the quirky music of Celestial North.
The Scotland musician describes the process that led to the song “Yarrow” this way:
I was sitting trying to meditate, or contemplate, beside the yarrow patch in my garden. I was finding it difficult to articulate how I was feeling and started to feel a bit frustrated. I decided to sit quietly and start again. I realised that I didn’t really have any words to write down as such but I did have a tune playing in my head. I decided to record this tune on my piano and added some other elements that I felt benefitted the song — a bodhran drum, a choir, the rustling of the yarrow patch and the roses recorded from my garden and some simple electronic sounds. This botanical soundscape is representative of how I felt whilst I was sitting with the yarrow and the tune played on the piano is the tune that was playing in my head whilst sitting with the plant.
I can safely say that this description is the first time that I – and probably you too – have ever read the words “botanical soundscape.” I’m also happy to know that I’m not the only one who has music enter their heads at unexpected moments.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The way the many musical elements mentioned above coexist without sounding cluttered.
2. The way the slow ¾ pace of the piano mimics the pace of deep breaths.
3. At 1.27, it shifts to 4/4 time, a meter better suited to jogging, or dare I say, climbing a staircase.
Recommended listening activity:
Embracing your weirdness.