Home | Caribou
Sometimes it’s hard to find the right song for the holidays.
I’m not a big fan of Christmas music. And finding music that I love, that my family will like hasn’t been the easiest. But this song does it.
I love it when a song can have old school soul - that reminds me of my family - with a modern feel.
This song reminds me of an exhibit I saw at Mass MoCA in October: Cauleen Smith - We Already Have What We Need.
The exhibit had a room with collections of items in front of screen with a video playing, that were projected on panels throughout the room. On one table, the objects felt oddly familiar; There were 80’s objects, like a cassette player and a polaroid camera, African figurines, and sci-fi figures. This table felt like someone had traveled to my childhood memories and picked up itms from my parents’ homes.
It was eerie. I had never experienced someone else’s art feeling so innate.
And especially eerier since it was the year anniversary of my dad’s death.
In that year, my eyes opened to a lot. And they’re still opening. There were all these moments, memories of things my dad said, or reading poems my dad wrote, that made me finally understand what my dad tried to make me see while he was alive.
When I read the description of the exhibit, my connection with it was made even clearer.
The artist’s provocative arrangements of objects – which she calls “living rooms” or “space stations” – invite us to consider the mundane aspects of life on earth alongside its untapped potential, which, as the title of the work suggests, is within our reach.
That exhibit, and that day, may have been one of the biggest of this year…or my life.
It helped me realize how close “where I am” and “where I come from” really are.
It helped me see how magical home really is.