Sigur Ros : Svefn-G-Englar

19.02.2011 : The day I walked out of work before my working hours ended officially and plopped down on top of a stuffed bear to watch "Svefn-G-Englar" by Sigur Ros. I must thank Nurt for showing it to me - I actually think I might have gone through life without watching the video... an unforgettable, and award winning video I don't think anyone should miss out on.

Svefn-G-Englar seems to be a play on words, translating to "sleepwalkers" or "Sleep Angels".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ5Grncdjlc
Directed by August Jacobsson and featuring the Reykjavik's Perlan Theatre Group


What made the video special for me at first were the quotes that appeared on the lower right hand corner of the screen. They were words that had been unimaginably beautifully uttered and had left their traces in the ever invisible, intangible weightless atmosphere of thoughts and memories.

The quotes... they made perfect sense and to me, couldn't have been said any better. I am not even going to write any comments or thoughts or feelings about the first three as I am pretty sure the words are so strong in their own sense, and so naked in its meaning that there's little room left for confusion or even disagreement.

I took the liberty of writing them down here, the first four are my favorites and placed in preferred order. The rest, as they appear in the video.

[the below list was amended today - #2 was originally #9, and the previous quote that was at #2 is now at #5]

1. “Without music, life would be a mistake” - Nietzcne

2. “In the end I think of music as saving grace for all humanity” – Henry Miller

3. “A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence” – Leopold Stokowski

4. “See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of nature being everywhere music” – Thomas Carlyle

NOTE ABOUT 4. : This one made me think about one of my... what can I say... ideas? perceptions? thoughts? a realization? that I had a couple of months ago... perhaps even a year ago... I can't recall exactly but - it came to my notice that I hear and register a lot of things in beats and rhythms. It could be the filing of a nail in a salon, the hammering and metal works at a construction site, the ringing clinks of cutlery, footsteps - running or walking - and even the hum of engines on a motorbike, a car or some other vehicle.

I sometimes wished I could separate the noises into different files like you do in a recording program where it lets you record music in multi-tracks. I bet if that happened, that when all the sounds we hear around us are broken down to different tracks, we would find and see that each did have it's own special rhythm and it is simply difficult to hear it amidst the chaos of everyday life.

I wondered after reading this whether that was along the lines of what Thomas Carlyle had meant.


5. “Music was invented to confirm human loneliness” – Lawrence Durrell

6. “Music is the shorthand of emotion” – Leo Tolstoy

7. “Music expresses that which cannot be said on which it is impossible to be silent” – Victor Hugo

8. “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything” – Plato

9. “Music can name the un-nameable and communicate the unknowable” – Leonard Bernstein

10. “Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite” – Thomas Carlyle


What then made the video special for me, will come in another post.