If You Want To Write A Song About The Moon

51 Shapes of Nits: The 32nd shape is the moon

I have a few favourite songs about the moon. My heart melts when I hear Margo Timmins of The Cowboy Junkies sing “Blue Moon Revisited (song for Elvis)” and I love Paul Simon’s “Song about the Moon” with its out-of-this-world lyrics. When I’m in a wild mood I’ll listen to “The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys and each time I hear the song I say to myself “Gee how wonderful can pop music be”. It can feel so utterly complete, like when you listen to a song, there’s really nothing else you could need or want. And when I wanna dance there’s Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” – WOW – or Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance”. All these songs make me feel so alive, there’s nothing that can compare to their magical spell over me. Oh and I almost forgot “The Killing Moon” by Echo & The Bunnymen. All this so-called “popular music” deserves a far grander nomination if it were up to me. These songs ignite some sort of a fire inside the soul that brings you so close to what life is all about. These songs are joyous, filled with the loveliest sort of energies and you can sense they know and feel what is worth knowing and feeling. It’s like you feel and know all at once. They all have this enigmatic bond with life and world. And I often think that these men and women are so very close to cracking the code, to revealing the mystery … the mystery of the little moon above. But not entirely … maybe above all they hail the mystery of it all …

And then there are Nits and the moon… As you could expect the moon shapes several of their lyrics in the most beautiful way, just think about the description of the moon as a coin with the head of the queen … The song “Moon & Stars” has always been my secret little lullaby. Its sweet innocence and the affectionate attachment which it sings have always enchanted me: “Don’t go far … don’t be late” … it’s not unlike the attachment I formed over the years with Nits … replacing my teddies, dolls and roller-skates with their playful and tender music, leaving my childhood behind … but not entirely … “The moon will shine on this house of mine”, the moon is one of the most faithful companions throughout the world of Nits. It shows up so now and then in their disarming, lyrical universe, adding a soft nighttime light to the music to keep us from harm and to take away the fear. And make their songs shine under the skies like a moonlit musical romance. As Joni Mitchell sang “At least the moon at the window – The thieves left that behind”. Except that in the world of Nits there’s hardly any place for thieves ….

But the moon song I like best of all is also my second favourite Nits song – yes I am quite steadfast about these things. Number one on my Nits list is “The Eiffel Tower” and number two is the unsurpassed GIANT NORMAL DWARF song “Moon Moon”. It must be the most beautiful song around this faithful distant figure in the skies that lights up most of our nights.

The way in which the song begins is equally riddle and fairytale. And have you heard the striking way in which the music builds the sweetest suspense in this tale, like the footsteps of the giant that tread amongst the music notes … and shake and split them up in a most pleasant manner? It gives the song the most wonderful definition and shapes.The song doesn’t really say much about the moon. Instead it would seem that Henk Hofstede considers the moon like an element of music itself. The title of the song “Moon Moon” is its own musical phrase. The moon clearly has its own melody, its own musical identity, it is part of the musical world of Nits, it is a part of the spell that music creates so effortlessly. The moon is there watching when Nits imagine their music and bring it to life. On its own the moon makes out the little refrain of the song. She is the light of the song, the perfect counterpart of the sun in the bright or grey daytime songs of life of Nits. They don’t sing about the moon; they make her part of the music of the song in a most bewitching manner, like you can feel her soft light glimmer over the song and the Nitsworld: “moon moon … the light whispers … This figurine displayed in the night sky became a character in the play about what happens under her watch … Nits’ play about the moon.

Those moon songs of Nits are amongst their most poetic fairytales of music and words. Their magic resides in the confidential combination of music and words, their tender symbiosis. It’s in the charming shapeliness of those details that the light of the music of Nits shines brightest …

The lyrics of the song are equally alluring and they are certainly amongst my favourite Hofstede couplets. The weeping, the wind, the willows, the whispers, wool and wits … are in a stark contrast with the sad men who smoke like chimneys and the elevator boy who got stuck between the floors of the house. In fact if I could ask Henk Hofstede to tell me a little more about the lyrics of one song, I’d probably pick this one. Especially the last verses of the song puzzle me exceedingly in their marvellous enigmatic beauty: “Now you’re back home in the new found land – The path to the house is cool – Pick up the suitcase of dreams – Now your wits are wool”… Sigh … they just had to follow that up with an album called WOOL, this last soft-textured line of the song …

Nits are wool too. They comfort me like a wool blanket when the moon is out.

Joke Roelandt, May 2025