Nick Drake
Bryter Layter

FLYING IN THE NORTHERN SKY

or "It's hard to stay angry when there's so much beauty in the world"

The end of September, meaning leaves that have not yet fallen, but are almost there. The end of September, or the "Introduction" of the second album of the supreme Nick Drake. The wind slowly takes on a slightly blue tone, slightly cold. The sun sets a little earlier. In the morning you want to stay hidden under the covers a little longer. We wake up to "Hazey Jane II"... who knows why it comes before "Hazey Jane I", who knows why it is vaguely cheerful, perhaps the only slightly carefree song by the artist from Tanworth-In-Arden. We sing a song for Hazey Jane before the tree colors shift towards an autumn dreamed to the violin chimes of "At The Chimes Of A City Clock". We imagine a future for Nick Drake, hidden among the regrets of "One Of These Things First" and the delicate whispers of "Hazey Jane I".

"You feel like leftover of something that's gone", you feel as though immersed in the instrumental sunset of the title-track. It's time for one of the most beautiful songs, rather poems, I have ever listened to, read, dreamed. The heart opens up in the wide breath of "Fly", a flight that takes our breath away, leaving us open-mouthed, as if suspended in a dream-like limbo, as if a second chance in life, as if a second grace, like Richie Tenenbaum returning home by bus from the hospital after his suicide attempt, like the ephemeral illusion of discovering a second face. A face touched by a caress evaporated with the morning dew, sublimated with a background of black choirs in "Poor Boy", a wandering track through paths of brass and pianistic embroidery.

The work fades into the immense yet light breath of "Northern Sky". In the northern sky dances this "emotion held in the palm of my hand", it seems to fall, and then rises again, spins on itself, resurfaces at times, like the plastic bag in "American Beauty", like that brief sequence where we perceive the gentle touch of some deity.

Some deity that perhaps looks down on us hidden among the clouds of "Sunday" and finally smiles for us, still here struggling in this Milan immersed in the sweetest and most melancholic late September there is.

Postscript: surely more than my review, it's a stanza of "Northern Sky" and a quote from "American Beauty" that best convey the feelings evoked by this album:

"I never felt magic crazy as this, I never saw moons know the meaning of the sea nor held emotion in the palm of my hand or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree, but now you're here brighten my northern sky!"

"It's hard to stay angry when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes it feels like I see it all at once and it's too much... my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it... and then it flows through me like rain... and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life"

from "Fly"

"Come, come sit on the fence in the sun And the clouds will roll away and we'll never deny That it's really too hard to fly(...) I just need your star for a day So come on and jump on my car by the bay Because now I have to know how beautiful you are in your way And the sea's as sure as I am But she will not need to cry Because it's really too hard to fly"

(Nick Drake's lyrics translations are from http://nickdrake.altervista.org/, film references are "American Beauty" by Sam Mendes and "The Royal Tenenbaums" by Wes Anderson)