I’m convinced that Aurora isn’t human. A fairy, an elf, a goddess of earth or sky. But not human. If she were human, how could she have created such a universally relatable discography? How could she have tapped into the true essence of the human experience, if she hadn’t first experienced it from above, around, or through the veil?
But, isn’t that what it is to be an artist?
Aurora Aksnes is a Norwegian musician who specializes in the fantastical, but also very real world we live in. It might be strange, spotlighting a musician—they belong to a different group, separated from writers by a wall of…what exactly? Have you noticed in musicians’ interviews, they rarely say when I was making music. Instead, it’s when I was writing, when I wrote my album. What is an album, then, but a novel, or a short story, a collection of poetry, in a different form.
Listening to songs for the first time, I tend to read along with the lyrics, following the ebb and flow of them, the pauses that break them apart and breaths that draw them together. While many artists’ songs read like memoirs, Aurora’s are like folklore. Not of a specific place or a time—in fact, they are disconnected entirely from either. A world of fantasy that feels like a mirrored reflection of our own. To read and listen to her is to indulge in fleeting escapism, but also to reflect on life; to meditate on how we, down to our deepest roots, connect as human beings.
The first time I heard Aurora—I don’t mean heard in the passing sense, I mean listened, with deep and complete attention—was on Earth Day (how perfect, right?). She performed, “The Seed,” for a series National Geographic produced to celebrate (check it out here). I admire many artists for how they wield their voices to add to the meaning of their lyrics, but Aurora does this on an unreachable level, and this video is proof. The quiet start, the whisper of consonants. The lyrics, it feels, are growing, are waking up. And they are breathing, a tremble that grows to a full earthquake, as if the surrounding trees are crying with her: “When the last tree has fallen / And the rivers are poisoned / You cannot eat money.” A tragedy taking physical form; a cry of warning and of strength. And they are quilted together in a story, palpable from beginning to end.
How a writer uses sound can make the difference between their work being an endless unraveling of immersive goodness, or a stodgy brick. I feel that is something, if anything, writers can learn from their musical siblings. Aurora is proof of that. Her lyrics take on a life of their own, all the words conversing with each other until they are knitted into a unified picture. Lately, the chorus from her song “Winter Bird” has kept me up with wonder:
“My tears are always frozen
I can see the air I breathe
Got my fingers painting pictures
On the glass in front of me
Lay me by the frozen river
Where the boats have passed me by
All I need is to remember
How it was to feel alive”
It doesn’t feel like eight individual lines. It’s a scene, cold and sad, but laced with hope. Each word seeps into the next, curling into each other like the misted breath she sings about. So at odds with the stark bridge:
“Rest against my pillow like the aging winter sun
Only wake each morning to remember that you’re gone
So I drift away again
To winter I belong”
If the chorus is a sweeping breath of life, this is a steady march. And all it took was interrupting the sibilance with hard walls and edges— “rest” is halted by “wake,” is halted by “gone.” A strange bell toll that suspends everything she’s built up, like a character’s aside before the final scene. All through her manipulation of sound, one of the various artistic talents I’ve worked hard to steal and implement into my own work.
This past May I was able to see her live in Montreal, CA. My friend and I managed to make it to the front of the crowd, center stage. There was a moment during “Dangerous Thing” when we were both clutching tight to each other, crying. She stood still, watching us with drawn brows, and brought her hand to her abdomen, then to her cheek. And she smiled, gently, her voice going soft, as if to say “it’s alright, we are here together, and I am here with you.”
Beyond the technical beauty of her music, beyond the mastery with which she wields her words, it’s the way she uses them to connect with people that stuns me the most. Never have I felt on such equal ground with an artist, even before meeting them in person. The way she interacts with people, both on and off stage, is as if they are the most wondrous thing in the universe. She has that about her, the pure and almost childlike amazement, that is so beautiful. It’s rare to see an artist, or anyone, so in touch with life like that. It’s that wonder, more than anything, that I’ve taken into my craft. That I feel more people should. Without that excitement, what is there?
When Aurora sings, she calls everyone to sit by her fireplace, letting you come however you are. And she tells you a story, many of them. I’d like to take back my first statement. Perhaps Aurora isn’t a fairy, an elf, a goddess of earth or sky. But she is no average human. In fact, she might be the most real human of them all.