Do you ever listen to a song and think to yourself, ‘this song is mine’? Many times, songs are attached to people, places, and moments you share with others, or relate to a popular idea or image. But some songs you listen to in complete loneliness and isolation that it warps you to a world so obscure and intimately yours. Yours and yours alone. This is what Honey and the Moon by Joseph Arthur does to me.
I was introduced to this song when I was in Grade 7. I first heard it in one of The O.C.’s most memorable scenes. Marissa and Ryan, at the early stages of knowing each other, infatuation blossoming, gaze at each other—Marissa longingly from where she stands outside her enormous house, and Ryan in the passenger seat of a car being driven by his adoptive dad as they exit their gate. Marissa gets blanketed by a sheath of sunlight as Ryan squints at her from the front seat, letting the distance envelop them greater as the car drives off under the warm afternoon sunset.
Interestingly, whenever I listen to this song, I think of old couples who have withstood the test of time. The silent, persevering, and simple kind of love that seems unheard of, or rather, drowned out, in this era of performance and surveillance. I fell in love with this song having no idea of what true love and longing is, but finding it in the song’s tender, melancholy instrumentals and pensive vocals.
I fell in love with this song half a decade shy from meeting my first and last love. Having no relationship experience whatsoever or any encounter of deep loss (yet), I felt the crushing indigo blue heartbreak that you must feel when something you hold dear comes close to an end—may it be a relationship, a dream, or an era you’re grasping to hold on to. I listen to this song and think: this must be what immense love, longing, and loneliness feels like.
I also found comfort in this song in times of self-imposed hunger. There was a period in my life that I would constantly starve myself, a time I hardly speak of, wanting it buried and obliterated into non-existence. I would listen to this song and it would do its job filling in the void in my stomach, and naturally, my soul. 'Til this day, even if I consider myself literally and spiritually well-fed, the song still feeds me some kind of obscure tender magic I can never put into words. The kind that only I can ever understand, a secret language only shared between me and the song.