On the edge of Yosemite.

Somewhere late at night in Indiana or maybe Montana, an old man hits his brakes in the middle of a two-lane highway because he sees a strange light in the sky. The car fishtails across both lanes and he pops the door and scrambles onto the blacktop to get better a look. There he is, grinning foolishly in the road, his face bathed in a strange blue light and saying “Oh my God” while other cars screech and crash. A Maersk truck jackknifes. But the old man does not move. He keeps scanning the sky for lights even after they are long gone. Emergency vehicles arrive.

At the station, he tells the cops that he was justified in stopping his car. If you’re not going to stop for extraterrestrials, what should you stop for? But that was a long time ago. Today you might find him slouched in a booth at the Tycoon Lounge, and he’ll show you a wrinkled article about how the government was testing weather balloons in the area that night and he’ll tell you that it was a cover up. Weather balloons don’t make that kind of light.

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Hildur Guðnadóttir – Erupting Light
from Without Sinking. Touch, 2009 | buy mp3s
Dramatic cello from Iceland. Beautiful music for strange landings in the middle of the night.