Norfolk & Western
Centralia

Well, yes, a farewell to winter is quite fitting.

And that's what I wanted to talk about, but then I took a step back a few years.

I read the story of a city and fell in love with it…

They were one of my favorite bands (in truth, a bit “degenerate”, in a mathematical sense, like I was, the only stable member of my “band”) I even took them on tour with me a few years ago.

“The future is the hope of finding in a drawer of an old dresser, in a still empty room of your life, a gift you forgot to unwrap.”

That's what a wise man told me that time I went to visit him.

If your life is full of empty rooms but they are all locked, and you can no longer enter them, it really doesn't get easy.

On the other hand, the other rooms were always open, including the one where every night I find my ghost, my old friend Captain Howdy, expressionless, staring at me until I can't breathe.

So I've decided to give up, to leave…

Centralia is a small town in the United States, in Pennsylvania, built in the mid-nineteenth century, for its exploitation, on a seam of anthracite, a type of coal that's not too easy to ignite, but even harder to extinguish.

It's still not known exactly who or what caused it, but since then, since the 60s, this fire has been burning underground in Centralia.

Eventually forcing the population to flee…

My music is said to be country-folk, theirs is too.

The notes of a guitar illuminate the shadows and make them less frightening, the great Canadian taught this to both of us.

I've learned it for some years now, since a dark mass ignited within me.

They also make the kind of music I love, perhaps just with fewer shadows and more light, at least back then, when they came on tour with me, it was like that.

This is their second album, a song Adam Selzer wrote especially for me, though he didn't know it yet.

“With the lights not shining and the silent guitars

There are moments that seem to find a contrary place.

In your contrary mind where the lights shine

I will ask the dusk to stay a little longer today.

In the house that was built

And the well that was dug

There are many possible things you dreamed of at twenty

And you're watching the night make its way towards you

You are armed with your expressionless silhouette but you know

You now know”

(Of divided night, Norfolk & Western)