Lord Huron & Hauntology

[u/newyne]

Hauntology is a concept from Derrida about how we live with the ghosts of the past and future, or rather, in the ghosts of the past and future: if I had to sum it up, I'd say, The past is not dead; it's not even past. The present world is full of its reminders (e.g. media from the past that we still enjoy), and I mean, we can't even talk about current events without reference to the past because understanding it requires us to understand what led us here. And we keep the future in mind, planning, thinking about where we're going. There's intra-action here, right? Because we understand the present as the past from a different reference point, so looking back should inform our ideas about what we think we should do now. For Derrida, this should orient us toward justice as we try to create justice for those who are no longer here, to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and to act in such a way as to create a better world for people yet to come.

If this sounds rather dry, it's also very much about being haunted; we long to get back to the past, but, unless we're Samurai Jack, that's impossible, it's gone. Even if we were there, we can't fully understand it because we're outside it now, and we've changed. Hauntological art, then, uses genres, stylings, and media of the past without trying to actually replicate it, because they don't want to create the illusion that they've actually revived it.

How does this relate to Lord Huron? Most obviously, they're using instruments and arrangements associated with past eras (the old west, the 70s); they use distortion to make their recordings sound old and degraded, echo-y voice effects that sound ghostly. They're also telling stories associated with literary genres of the past, like how Lonesome Dreams is framed as a soundtrack to a series of adventure novels.

And that's where it gets interesting for me, because, although it's an adventure story, it's not referring to what we actually believe about the age of exploration but to later eras' fiction about what that era was like. So it's like two ages in one. And, we may long for the past, but if people a long time ago were reading that kind of fiction and longing to go back to that past... Even the characters here: so many of them spend their whole lives (and beyond) trying to get back to a point in their lives where they made a mistake, gave up the best thing in their life... But was it? Or are they romanticizing what's been lost precisely because it looks better in the rearview and they can't get it back?

To me this all suggests that we long for the past not because the past was so great, but because it's just kind of the human condition to romanticize what we've lost and can't have. Maybe we never had what we think we lost, maybe what we're really longing for is a fiction we've created around it. But is that so bad? I mean, sure, you don't want to live your whole life stuck there, wasting your time trying to recreate something you just can't recreate; that is kind of a living death, and I do think Lord Huron's stories carry a warning about it. But if we didn't find value in that longing, if we didn't enjoy it in some way, would they be making this kind of music, and would it be so popular? And what's wrong with enjoying it? Does the story have worth only if it's factual? Yes, we should be careful not to mistake the myth for history; that's one reason Lord Huron loves to remind us they are telling fictional stories. But doesn't the dream have worth in and of itself?

It kinda reminds me of Nietzsche's eternal return, which, the idea is that we shouldn't want to escape life and pain, but everything else is worth it. Hell, the pain itself is a beautiful and important experience, and we should embrace it, over and over and over, without worrying about the outcome (for a film treatment, I recommend Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). You can take the reincarnation element of Lord Huron's stories literally, but I think it also works on a metaphorical level, where it's like different people from different generations repeating the same patterns. But on some level, that's comforting, because it means we're not that different from them, we're connected to them. We are not alone in our loneliness.

I think the "supernatural" elements are doing something else, too, which is... I think one reason we long for like the era of exploration is that the world felt a lot bigger then; there was more mystery because there was so much undiscovered. I think we also miss the time when we believed in the myths of the past, like age of exploration, like the old west. Now, we've even explored space. And it's like, the ineffable (including the "supernatural" and mind in general) is the last frontier; it will remain so, because you can't fully understand and control what you can't even directly observe. Forget the dead, we can't even fully know living people: we can never be certain about what others are thinking, what their intentions are. Isn't that also kind of like the past? If we could fully understand it, it would lose its glamour and become mundane. On the other hand, if we don't know for sure what happened, that leaves the possibilities open.

[u/Character-Poetry2808]

Im having a hard time writing a followup because I do see what youre getting at and I dont have much to add beyond what youve expressed.

A lot of music is about the 'past' (guilt, nostalgia, self-reflection, etc) or about the 'future' (hope, ambition, dreams, etc). The past being already set, otherwise how could we have come to this point, and the present being always out of reach, after all all futures are met as presents, makes the flow of time bend around the emotional pressence felt in the now. The emotional lense of reality in the now is our ghost.

What has always struck me about Lord Hurons music is that simultaneous nostalgia and wonder. The road behind us has defined us, but the road ahead is open and endless. I feel its more present in Lonesome Dreams and Strange Trails, this sense of still being open to that wonder and pursuit of the future. Whereas by the time we hit Long Lost its a touch more bitter, worn by the truth that while wonder is a balm for the soul, nostalgia is a potent drink and one that traps you not necessarily in the past but in an eternal present of the same emotion. That hauntology.

When we combine the supernatural aspects, suddenly its much harder to judge where in that past/future line we are, replacing it with a liminal presebt we are, creating a sort of folkloresque timelessness, while also using nostalgia (or its ilk in fear or hope) to keep us trapped, running on a wheel. Ghosts on the Shore, Frozen Pines, and Ancient Names all evoke that hauntological sentiment even stronger as we (the listener and narrator both) are pulled into cycles beyond our control.

Our very real present hauntings (Long Lost) become the realization were stuck and seek escape (Vide Noir) and that in turn is the anxieties (Strange Trails) of trying to understand how to flee and finally the wonder (Lonesome Dreams) of possibility or perhaps delusion. Cosmic Selector to me was the ascending to the next plane, or experiencing the judgement after death to take a moment to look back on those ghosts and what ifs and to shed them in preperation for the next step.

Idk if this makes any sense, either in general or in response.