Behold the latest track from a. harlana (aka Juno Roome) which is called “My Dear, I Will Think Of You”. Juno’s music is like a sweater, it wraps around you and keeps you warm – perfect for a January morning in Portland – even when the content of the music is distant. This track lies in the sweet spot of folk and dreampop, reminiscent of early Sigur Rós. Juno’s effervescent, breathy vocals carry over the layers of guitar, which create a rhythm of their own.
Always candid, Juno says of “My Dear, I Will Think Of You”:
“The song is about death and fears — the thoughts that continue to haunt me.
I think about lying in bed in old age in a dilapidated hospital (because I’m probably poor) — everyone who’s ever loved me is either already gone or never existed to begin with, so I’m alone, in my bed, dying, and those are the last moments of my small little life, lying in the dark by myself, when I close my eyes, that’s the end. I close my eyes, realizing that it may be the last time ever doing so, that they may never open ever again.”
I suppose there’s also no definitive way of telling that the person who goes to sleep at night is the person who wakes up the next morning. We may die every night, and it’s someone else’s consciousness implanted with our memories who wakes up in the morning. I suppose I think about this whenever I lie down.
I’ve written a few songs inspired by my parents — verse two of this song might be the most straightforward, unambiguous piece I’ve ever written about them. I think about my parents a lot in the context of my own relationships — and whenever I think about compatibility. I don’t think they were ever meant to be together. They would throw things at one another in their youthful age when they would fight — I remember being a boy, hiding in my room, peeking through the thin, tall crack of my door, watching my parents get violent with one another, things flying across the living room, yelling and shouting. They are divorced now, not amicably, they wouldn’t even talk to one another, so I’m sometimes the medium through which they communicate. I do fear that I hurt those who love me. It’s blood. I know I have before. I want to think that I’ve learned from my mistakes, my parents’ mistakes. But I suppose time will tell.
It’s a hope that my thoughts and love for “you” (the “you” in the song) will calm these fears in me, and that their thoughts and love for me will clam their fears in them.”
