Snow Motion
ISSUE #39
Today I'm here with another Earwyrms Essential, and this time it's the Snow Playlist, the one you put on if you're ever stuck having to walk home in a flurry. Every time we talk about the weather down here, and a Southerner laments how much they hate the cold outside, there's usually a Northerner close by to point out that this is not True Cold, and how much they actually miss that particular chill. It proves how much your preferences depend on how you grew up, and what you're nostalgic for—how the hardships of your inherited place are internalized and naturalized until they're not hard at all, but beloved instead.
There is a clincher in the Northerner's point that tends to be hidden behind their wistful comments, however, and that is the presence of snow. The beauty of snow gives purpose winter; it almost makes it seem worth it. That we call an accumulation of snow a "blanket" is pretty apt, because the air does seem a little warmer during a gentle snowfall as opposed to the sub-zero breath of an open moon on a winter night. Snow slows everything down, glimmering time-turners that keep everything still for just a moment. It's often beautiful, and these are songs that remind me of that serenity.
The coldest film I've seen to date is Inside Llewyn Davis. The coldest book I've read is Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. The coldest album is For Emma, Forever Ago, although that was rivaled by 22, A Million a month ago when I listened to it while driving back to Iowa during the Full Cold Moon on the longest night of the year. For Emma is a natural cold—the kind borne by the wind but staved off by cedars if you walk in the woods—while 22 is an alien, desolate, interstellar cold. Winter is the closest we get to tasting what it's like in outer space, and there's something visceral about being reminded why our planet is a blessing, and how we should all be committed to keeping it in balance.
In trying to explain to myself why I like the cold, I've realized that it has to do with reminding myself of what my body can handle. It's similar to something I noticed again this fall, when the days got shorter and my daily runs would end after dusk. I started running in the cemetery to get into the Halloween spirit, and deep within the grounds there were no streetlights at all. I could still see—of course—but it'd been a while since I'd noticed the difference between my rods and cones, and in the dark of night there were shades of gray I'd forgotten I could even perceive. It's easy for me to forget that my body is capable of these sensations when I rarely access them.
I take that and translate it to how it feels to be cold, how nice it can be to feel every inch of my skin and remind myself that I'm not going to die from a little nip in the air, as long as I have a place where I can warm up eventually. It makes me realize that I'll be okay if I don't have a yacht to brag about someday as long as I have my walls and my blankets. It humbles me.
I do try to remember that the reason I'm able to endure is the knowledge that there's always a summer coming soon. There would be nothing quite so hellish as an everlasting winter.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.