The Escapism of Bon Iver Has Nothing to Do with a Cabin in the Woods

All photos by Allyson Lupovich

"It might be over soon." (Concert.)

For two consecutive December nights, at the lushly renovated Kings Theater in Brooklyn, Justin Vernon opened sold-out concerts by reminding his audience that the end was nigh. The line above comes from "22, Over Soon," the opening number of Vernon's most recent album as Bon Iver, 22, a Million. The Wisconsin folk singer is fond of signs and symbols, and his album and song titles aren't chosen at random. Twenty-two stands for the "Master Builder." It's one of three "master numbers," all of them multiples of 11, and according to numerology.com, it's "the most powerful of all numbers, able to turn lofty dreams into realities."

Much of the audience was likely hoping for a different sort of alchemy—they were there for comfort, for solace, to let a warm voice wash away their worries. It's winter, and the hundreds of well-groomed men, of women sporting elfin shoes, just wanted some comfort.

After the presidential election, the $95 million wonder theater wasn't a good place for thinking about the rest of the world, either. The crowd on Monday was not particularly diverse racially—or, I think it's safe to say, politically. It'd be surprising if, at a hot-ticket Bon Iver concert deep in Brooklyn, there were many fans of the President-elect. Not exactly a safe space for the #MAGA crowd.

Vernon sang for about an hour and a half, cuts from the extraordinary new album and the one before it, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, which came out five years ago. The next year, in 2012, a couple months before Barack Obama was reelected, his band announced that it would be taking a hiatus.

"There's so much attention on the band, it can be distracting at times," he said then. "I really feel the need to walk away from it while I still care about it. And then if I come back to it—if at all—I'll feel better about it and be renewed."

It's a sound byte culture, and the media zeroed in on "if at all," prompting despairing headlines that Bon Iver was abandoning us all to hole up in a snowy Wisconsin cabin for another hundred years. A clarification was quickly made—something about "cycles" and "two busy years"—but by the label not Vernon, and not in particularly clear language. And just like that, Bon Iver disappeared, many people thought, for good.

The years ticked by. Good music continued to exist, despite the GIGANTIC Bon-Iver-sized hole in the culture. (This is sarcasm.) But the true believers continued to hope. And then all of a sudden, this September, there was enormous relief when the new album was announced as imminent.

But even though Vernon returned with an extraordinary album, like the father who goes to the store for cigarettes, he still hasn't regained the full faith of his fans.

He made it pretty clear on Monday that he didn't much like encores. But the vast majority of the audience stayed put until the lights came on and the word "over" flashed onto the displays. They were hopeful that the singer-man had more soul-soothing to perform before he disappeared for good.

It might be over soon. (Fear.)

Bon Iver's seeming fatalism earlier this week may have hit a not-so-deep nerve. There's a general feeling among many young people on the left that, with the election of a self-styled master builder to the presidency of the United States, the time for frivolous pursuits like Bon Iver concerts is over.

Did even politically-minded artists, your Vince Staples, your Kool A.D.'s, your Solange's, your Meredith Graves's, stop a political expression of white authoritarianism from coming to power? Was this music that we love so much even worth anything at all? Or was it just a distraction? When we take the time to stop thinking about the election and relax at a Bon Iver show, are we guilty of escapism, of making the political situation worse with our own inaction?

Among liberals, fear of Trump is pervasive. There's anecdotal evidence that city people are purchasing weapons. Sober-minded adults who know things about business and markets and stuff go on podcasts and talk about nuclear annihilation.

Joe Weisenthal, the executive editor of Bloomberg Markets and a serious and thoughtful writer, talked about dealing with the president-elect in a recent interview:

"If things got really bad, we could have, y'know, the end of civilization," he said, referring not so much to his own fears as to the fears of prominent technocrats and wonks. "War and terrible things could happen domestically and internationally. We should just try to see another day."

Regardless of the strength of your political feeling or involvement, if you have any friends on the left, these are the kinds of anxieties that you're subjected to, and maybe even experiencing, every day. The fear, not only of times getting a little tougher, of having to cut back on your uber rides, or your weekly trips to Applebees. No, the worries are hyperbolic: mass deportation, torture, and, yes, oblivion.

(That's not an exaggeration. Look at the way that the number of Google searches for the term "nuclear war" spiked the day after the election.)

People warn against normalization. They talk about the constant vigilance that will be needed to combat the policies of the president-elect and his cabinet. And if anyone tries to assert that culture and art has political value of its own they scoff.

It might be over soon. (Erykah.) 22, a Million was released at the end of September. It was denser and knottier and stranger than anything Vernon had ever done before, several worlds away from his bearded-guy-with-a-guitar debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. I think it's a masterpiece and most critics agree:  "He's never sounded this unburdened, this plainly iridescent," Hua Hsu writes, near the end of his New Yorker review.

The album's originality, it's very new-ness spoke to something that the soul and R&B singer, Erykah Badu, brought up in a recent interview, after being asked about how she dealt with creative blocks like the one Bon Iver seems to have experienced. She made a connection between good art, and down periods of rest and rejuvenation.

"I don't think there's any such thing as writer's block or any of that," she said. "I think it's just downloading period."

"It's just time to kind of learn, experience, do stuff, so that you'll have something to write about," she continued. "The unfortunate thing is that we're all under a gun. We're all under a time constraint, when we're trying to create or write, so it makes it appear that you have a writer's block. But really, that's probably the time that you're supposed to be downloading."

The downloading periods that Ms. Badu talks about, that Vernon used to make such an incredible album, do not only apply to Artistic Geniuses, or whatever. They apply to all of us.

Journalists and our friends have warned us not to Timothy Leary ourselves, to continue to keep a close eye on the news. And they're right of course. We cannot drop out entirely.

But we can be stronger, braver, better political actors if we take care of ourselves first. And that means, you know, going to concerts. Cooking meals. Enjoying our lives, on occasion, but pledging to return. The Onion put it best, as usual: "Woman Takes Short Half-hour Break from Being Feminist to Enjoy TV Show." And after that, to quote a different part of that Badu interview, manifest your honesty in bravery, in whatever way you see fit.

It might be over soon. (Augustine.)

If you think about what Vernon and Badu do in purely economic terms, then this argument may work for you: Rest today, fight the power tomorrow. In terms of pure utility, of political pragmatism, it is a sensible appeal to reason. And if you're a pure materialist this is a good time to stop reading! Bye now!

Many of us who listen to Bon Iver believe that there's more to life than just materialism. God may have died more than a century ago but we're (sorry) 'spiritual,' or we like numerology, or horoscopes. We dabble in the beyond. It's why we can stomach Vernon's frequent appeals to a higher power. In "33 'God,'" a master number that stands for Jesus Christ, he sings simply, apropos of nothing: "I find God. And religions too." And it didn't even make me gag. In fact, I love that fucking song.

The "escape" I'm finding in the arts is not so much an escape as a way to reckon with what's to come. To remember that I believe that there are things separate from politics and things that matter more than politics. I still do believe this, even as I continue to become sober-minded adult who know things about business and politics and stuff.

Not everyone needs to share this belief. It's none of my business what other people think, or what other people do. And the 'turn to faith' (as represented by this essay) is a genre that, according to the author Jay McInerney, stretches back "at least to St. Augustine."

I didn't think I was gonna have to like, 'reconnect with my spirituality' after the election, if that's what you want to call it. But whatever these thoughts are, they've sustained me this December. They allowed me to enjoy a remarkable show at the King's Theatre. They remind me all the time that sure, it might be over soon, but we always know that to be the case, no matter who the president-elect is.

From the minute we're born, the truth is, it might be over soon. And sure, that's terrifying. For all of us. No one wants a good thing to end. Everybody wants the show to go on, just three more songs. If we cheer loud enough it might happen. But even if an artist does an encore, beautiful times end. Beautiful things fade. Bad things happen and good things happen and the cycle repeats. Maybe, that's OK. I don't know.

Jonah Bromwich lives in New York City and writes about news, music, books, movies, and sometimes, the world. He tries not to write about things he knows nothing about. Follow him on Twitter.