if I could write a song

In the bus from Kabelvåg I listened to an interview with First Aid Kit. Such sweet little girls. Then I listened to their album again, while watching the mountains become higher and softer around the edges. It was such a perfect soundtrack, the austerity and beauty of the landscape and the melancholy of the Söderberg sisters’ singing.

They have a song on their new album, ”Shattered & hollow”, that did something to me already the first time I heard it. It is piercing, that clarity. It begins with:

I am in love, and I am lost

but I’d rather be broken than empty

oh, I’d rather be shattered than hollow

Oh, I’d rather be by your side

And I know that. I know what being empty feels like. I know hollow. And I remember thinking, when I suddenly realized that I wasn’t anymore, how much better it is to have something. Anything. Even if it is something that hurts. Because the hurt means there is something to work with. Something that might be mended, or transformed.

It is good to remember that, on nights when the hurt might feel overwhelming, intolerable, devastating.

It is better than emptiness.

And it can always be changed.