As we entered into the final week of September, I noticed how quickly our days were filled with autumnal sensations... In one week, my son went from wearing shorts to school to wearing a rain coat, and I suddenly found myself still working at the point where my Mac would flip over to dark mode… Something I had kind of forgotten it even did.
Normally I head into the closing months of the year with a heavy heart. I much prefer the long evenings and warming sensations of summer over the other seasons, and yet this year I find myself longing for the coziness of autumn. The idea of being able to wear long sleeves and jumpers, and slipping into a coat and sturdy leather boots before heading out suddenly feels comforting. I have no doubt this has a lot to do with COVID-19 and little to do with me changing. For one, I am sure most of us will be glad to see the back of 2020, but I also think there is something pleasing about seeing the passing of time at a point where most other things seem unchanging.
Into this transitional experience enters Slow Shudder’s Time Now For Ghosts, a song the manages to sound like browning leaves releasing their grasp from tree branches and riding the winds to places unknown. Quietly beautiful vocals spin and twirl, buoyed by the melodic movement portrayed by electronic synths. The resulting piece feels contemplative, mildly melancholic and yet forward looking.
That feeling suits the emotional theme of the song, which was inspired by introspection about unresolved past relationships, itself triggered by a series of unusually vivid dreams. The experience of thinking about those kinds of relationships can be an intriguing one. Recognising, much like those brown leaves, how we have aged and changed in the time that has passed. Wondering whether that change would have brought us closer together or pushed us further apart from that person, or those people, with whom intense connections never quite blossomed in the way that we might have hoped.
Slow Shudder is Amanda Mayo, a producer, DJ, vocalist and songwriter who now resides in Seattle, WA, having previously lived in Miami, New York, London and LA. The song comes from Mayo’s experiences of unpacking her memories, something she has only found the time and space for as a result of being in lockdown. That, in combination with a healthy dose of the weird world of Haruki Murakami, gave rise to Time Now For Ghosts:
“When lockdown went into effect, I began having daily dreams about the first person I romantically loved, who unexpectedly passed away just over four years ago, as well as other people in my life with whom I was previously involved. I recognized that there were a lot of unprocessed emotions there, which I’d compartmentalized over the years instead of fully accepting and feeling.
Throughout this time, I was reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, which explores the concept of parallel realities. The song title Time Now For Ghosts is a line from the book that struck a chord with me, as it made me think of a concept within physics: quantum entanglement, described by Einstein as ‘spooky action at a distance’.
It’s interesting to think about the concept of entanglement within the framework of relationships and memory. Obviously, when writing, I was considering it less from a particle physics standpoint and more as a thought experiment, based in emotion - I suppose you could call it an emotion experiment.”
Check out Time Now For Ghosts below.