My Sleepless Darling

50 Shapes of Nits: The forty-first shape is the Darling Stone of Hietaniemi Hautausmaa

“The Darling Stone” is one of these Nits songs that is too beautiful for this world. Not for the world as it could be, but for the world that is, created by man. I recently saw a documentary where a religious woman who was in her nineties and lived somewhere in Congo, helping out those in need, was being interviewed about life, and this woman – all smiles, hope, courage, goodness and optimism – claimed very determinedly: “look around you, we are living in nothing short of a paradise”. She was standing in a beautiful natural garden and said we are living in paradise. And she is right of course.

The music of Nits is created in the same spirit of goodwill. Their music is like the timespan between birth and death, full of life and life’s adventure, wonder, beauty and joy, a little paradise to dwell in and reflect about all things human. The WOOL song “The Darling Stone” is Nits’s tender meditation on life and death, on a walk through the Hietaniemi Hautausmaa cemetery in Helsinki. The wind is turning – we are setting off in a very different direction for a very special walk indeed – a fire is burning somewhere far away. A far away place like in a fairytale and this song to me is indeed exactly that: a sweet fairytale on life, love and death centred around a stone in a graveyard, a tale of eros and thanatos – the forces of life and death – with an imaginary dialogue between a darling lying beneath her stone and a stranger visiting the cemetery. It’s such a wonderful tale really, set in such an angelic musical scene and yet it is so down to earth.This sort of musical poetry is so typical of Nits, there is nothing quite like it. Henk Hofstede knows like no other how to create these magical places in his songs – places that are real but then are somewhat mystified, like a fairyland where the imagination invents miniature stories, a little allegory in this case, of life, love and death acted out by a stranger who is looking for the grave of a sleepless darling, for a gravestone that only says “Darling”. The song is drenched in a subtle symbolism of earth, stones, leaves, wind, fire, the lively stranger making his way along the graves, hearing the restless voice of the sleepless darling calling out to him from the loneliness of her grave. And at the end of the song he picks up his suitcase and flies off again into the sky … Whatever happened in between?

“Where are we going”, Henk Hofstede asks in his usual eagerness and enthusiasm to go and explore a new city – “To Hietanieme Hautausmaa” he answers in a voice that imitates the strangeness and adventure that the name in the Finnish language is spelling out to him. And then … follows one of those lines that stands out in the whole poetry of Nits, again in its simplicity, but also in its wonderful alliance with the melody and in its words that are as sublime as they are natural: ”It’s a perfect grey graveyard day” … The stage is set for a fairytale encounter between the sleepless darling – Nits’s surrogate to Sleeping Beauty, equally enigmatic and enthralling for sure – and the passing stranger. One of the most ethereal and enchanting rendezvous in Nits world is taking place at this Helsinki cemetery on a perfect grey day. Only in Nitsland can the colour grey be so perfect and so beautiful! And a grey day so full of beautiful meanings.

The stranger sets one foot in front of the other walking through this unearthly cemetery looking for the darling stone. But he will not find it. There is only this wondrous dialogue of voices in the song that blur the boundaries between life and death in a state of pensiveness, the music swaying softly in a dreamy, drowsy way. The music wonderfully combines the hopeful pace of the footsteps of the protagonist with the melancholic grey mood that hovers over the cemetery. The hope of an impossible exchange finally buried under a blanket of autumn leaves.

WOOL is full of references to death or the fear of it. Just like the Ivory Boy, the protagonists of various songs are confronted with the destructive forces of thanatos. And the songs feel like a way to make peace with the idea of an ending and to let go of the fear: “I will die, maybe soon – I won’t be afraid”, Henk Hofstede sings during another walk on the album WOOL, this one with Maria. “The Darling Stone” fits in this mood: its soft greyness, the drowsiness and soothing nature of the music, its languor and calmness all seem to point at an acceptance and a quiet resignation. An embracing of the inevitable end, eventually. But not just yet. There is still time to get back into life.

When the plane takes off again into the skies, no one really knows what happened in this dreamy meditation of a song. But what remains is the keenness to live and continue the journey through world, life and music.

The sleepless darling underneath her stone stays unmoved as a reminder that the wish and urge, the drive to live are without end for those who love. Eros, the force of life and love, so beautifully sung by Nits in this song about a stone.

A little further down on the album WOOL, the leaves and rain of the Nits seasons autumn and winter revisit the theme of Eros and Thanatos in an even more magnificent way. I am talking about the song “Angel of Happy Hour”, a very sensual Nits song which seems to reveal this almost erotic female presence in the seasonal world of the song. She appears from a world of winter and war, where wonders fell asleep but inside her she carries this vital passion for life: the passion fruit was in her eyes and in her mouth. She lights up the world with her presence for a moment only to turn barren again. A dry, cold place is left after the passion has gone. This angel of happy hour that flutters so lightly between the two opposite worlds of a fertile one on the one hand, of honey and flowers and a barren one on the other, where nothing grows, alternates between the forces of eros and thanatos in a most sensual way. On several WOOL songs such hints of female sensuality emerge and then disappear again. “The Darling Stone” and “Angel of Happy Hour” are two exquisite gems of sensual play with the essential contradictory forces in our world, in a light, but telling and authoritative musical distraction offered by Nits. Two opposite energies that shape the music of these songs into compelling poetry. The songs combine tales of the seasons with the story of the drive and passion to live and the inevitability of death. Henk Hofstede sings with the melancholy and heartbreak in his voice, for the beauty that has already gone. Exceptional and profound songwriting; those WOOL songs where Eros and Thanatos meet in a glorious, seasonal landscape of music. I compare it to the force of Eros in their recent song «The Tree », same sensuality of life, of nature and the seasons. Again … too beautiful for this world …

Joke Roelandt, August 2025