Starálfur

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Staring Elf

Blue Night Over The Sky Blue Night Over Me Dis-Appeared Out Of The Window Me With Hands Hidden Under My Cheek I Think About My Day Today And Yesterday I Put On My Blue Nighties Go Straight To Bed I Pull The Soft Covers Over Close My Eyes I Hide My Head Under The Covers A Little Elf Stares At Me Runs Towards Me But Doesn’t Move From Place - Himself A Staring Elf I Open My Eyes Take The Crusts Out Stretch Myself And Check (If I Haven’t) Returned Again And Everything Is Okay Still There Is Something Missing Like All The Walls

This song, to me, is so incredibly epic. Every time I listen to it I feel like I'm on some great adventure. It starts out in an almost paradoxical racing lull which just seems to draw me into the song.

What is so amazing though is the small nuances I notice for the first time each time I listen to it. Like what sounds to be a television broadcast or the sounds of birds chirping. And just as my mind starts to slip, the song pulls my entire being into it around 2:28 with the most amazing... I don't even know what to call it. Bliss?

Words just can't describe the feeling. It's as though I've let go everything within me. And that's when the song stops and the acoustic guitar begins, filling the emptiness within with a satisfying nothingness. And just as my mind's eyes begin float away, the song pulls me back in with the spectacular sounds of what sounds like a heartbeat or shots of a cannon.

The song then builds and builds into a glorious climax that is a myriad of strings, each one singing a song of overwhelming emotion. Sadness, happiness, triumph and disappointment... all emotions and states of beings blend into one great orchestra of sound.

And just as the song ends, just as the light faded from the eyes of this beautiful giant, the thing that always comes to my mind is "This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang, but a whimper"...

this song makes me want to cease to exist, like i should stop holding onto my physical self and melt into the universe. it's painful, it's hopeful, it's epic, it's too beautiful to understand... or maybe it's understandable in an innate way but i cannot pin it down in words. i love the common sounds they scattered through it and the raw sound of the guitar in contrast with the refined orchestral sound. the bumping noise like travelling down the highway. oddly, it reminds me of "2001: a space odyssey".

You like Pearl Jam? You my friend are the idiot.

i love this song so much.. and honestly when i listen to it, it doesn't matter what language it's in. it's like sigur ros transcends language barriers.. you make the song what you want it to be. and i think it's much more personal in that sense.

love that song, it's my favorite. but according to the band they do not sing in either icelandic or english or any other language. they use the vocals as another instrument. so how did you translate that?

i believe they sing a combination of icelandic and "hopelandish" which is just words they made up.

On their last 2 albums they sung in icelandic and hopelandic, which is just something Jónsi the singer made up, but on their new album they won't be singing at all, which kind of sucks:P

I enjoy Sigur Ros, sort of makes me wish I could understand what they were saying on a majority of their music.

they will be singing on the new album, but it's all in hopelandic. they would rather fans come up with their own lyrics. they're including tissue paper inside the cd case for fans to write down their lyrics, and then they'll be able to submit them to the official sigur ros website where a computer program will be able to recognize words, and after they've gotten enough all the submitted word will "become" the lyrics.