Saeglopur and Life's Challenges

Finally I get to blog on the topic that I accidentally blogged about before. Let’s call this one a sequel. Checking the list of music I regularly listen to I’d have to pick Sæglópur by Sigur Rós. There’s plenty of room for interpretation and I’m sure that if someone else would enjoy it, they would interpret it differently. The video that was provided with the music consists of a kid almost drowning but I listened to the music first. Judging by the music video the video seemed to have come after too. The definition of Sæglópur is lost at sea and the song seems to have more of a sense of journeying instead of drowning; the music has a more progressive tune, and it moves on rather than thrashing around in monotony. When I meant interpretive nature of the song, part of it comes from the lack of actual lyrics. It sounds like spoken words but it’s totally gibberish, dubbed ‘Hopelandic’ by the lead vocalist Jónsi Birgisson. The song follows typical story structure by the tempo and mood of the music. We have a rising action, conflict, climax, and resolution element to the song.
The pacing is fairly constant and I feel that to keep a pace like that in your normal life would be a positive thing. The song starts out fairly neutral with its synth and bells and the main vocalists strange falsetto. When the tempo goes up and the main guitar starts pouring in, I interpret that part of the song as surmounting of life’s challenges. The rising notes and falsetto with slowing down at the end is the obvious resolution, with maybe themes of character growth. I wouldn’t say the song represents an entire life but I feel life is like a constant progression of these small little situations and stories. Also adding to the story-like nature of the song is the fact that it was used in the Prince of Persia video game. I would suppose it being used in a video game favorite must have influenced me. The trailer for the game used it and was edited in a way to match the characters on screen to reflect the music. I wouldn’t be surprised if the makers of the game, Ubisoft chose the music for Prince of Persia this way. Joseph Campbell is also a large influence so that’s another possible reason I interpreted the structure of Sæglópur that way. Rising action, falling action is inherent in stories and Sæglópur definitely has those elements.
I suppose Saeglopur can be used as a method of attacking life’s challenges. If you don’t read, it could be where you can get your inspiration from. Every day you come across a challenge, and you conflict with it. The middle of the song properly reflects the turmoil of what a challenge is. Once you deal with the challenge in some way you come out of it in better shape than you did before in life; the soft melodies of the last part of the song is the coda. It could represent relaxation, your reward or whatever.