When I get up in the morning, I go right back to bed again. I feel best in the evening the moment I put out the light and pull the feather-bed over my head. — from Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, by Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard, a man who believed that the goal of existence is to live life fully, a man who extolled the virtues of walking, whose writings have reverberated through our brains for eight score and four years, didn’t like to get out of bed in the morning. In ‘Flora, Flora,’ Mt. Meru explores that sliver of existential sunshine that enters uninvited through the not-fully-closed curtains to cast a bright blaze across our mental bed, the alarm that has no snooze button and that can be dealt with only by movement. A cat pouncing on your foot is also effective.

So Flora, Flora leave me alone,
My mind’s a mess and I’d hate it to show,
Your subtle push, just leave me be,
I’ll test the times as a means of relief…

‘The song was written about difficulties being a mostly introverted person like myself and going into the real world,’ composer Andrew Magcale related in an email. ‘One that requires assertiveness and demands that one “puts their foot down” to really go out and get what they want out of life.’ Kierkegaard tells us that introversion is not a Bad Thing, that one must humble oneself before being humbled by the daggers and arrows of the World…

In order to learn true humility … it is good for a person to withdraw from the turmoil of the world (we see that Christ withdrew when the people wanted to proclaim him king as well as when he had to walk the thorny path), for in life either the depressing or the elevating impression is too dominant for a true balance to come about.

‘Flora, Flora’ is beautifully understated, with soft harmonies above a delicate keyboard. Even when the full arrangement arrives, the song maintains its gentle resolve. Andrew tells me that the track originated on a banjo, and we applaud the decision to explore alternative avenues of expression.

Based in the East Bay area of northern California, Mt. Meru describes their music as reflecting ‘a wide array of influences grounded in folk, indie, and pop.’ Today’s track is from their new twelve-song self-named album. If you’re looking for music that bludgeons you over the head with a ball-peen hammer, well, this isn’t it. Every track is a soft swirl of listenable and likable pop and folk. This album grew on me. I was immediately drawn to ‘Flora, Flora’ because I’m a sucker for harmonies, but I ended up downloading the entire thing.

You can support deserving independent musicians like Mt. Meru by visiting their Bandcamp page and downloading their album. Check out the band’s website, and follow Mt. Meru on Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram. And check out their video for ‘Ithaca’ on YouTube.