Sunday, December 21, 2008

Alpine Melancholy



So - the snow came down and covered the city in a blanket of hush. This is what I love about this weather. It's not dramatic, it just is matter of fact - cold, immobilizing and quiet. The city becomes slowed down and people just have to accept -- and/or work remotely. It's a pause button (not necessarily a stop button), long enough for us to realize that nature means business and maybe napping all day isn't a bad thing for us (like bears and other creatures do).

Last year - we didn't get quite the snow, but I had a Joseph Beuyes kind of thing going. Playing up an Ice and Apline rites aesthetic. Kind of a celebration of living along side the elements, embracing the cold, enduring it in a kind of Hegelian struggle, the kind I see the Fixie riders lately riding up snow covered streets with a perversity all their own.

This year, I feel more of a quiet revolution with the snow. More following it's direction which is "get indoors and out of our way". My queue is more "Jens Lekman swedish melancholia", looking out a window, admiring the beauty and watching the quiet death that I hear in Dylan songs (Girl from the North Country)... Things are quiet, and I am cut off from the rest of the world. There is little or no human contact. Ice, Ice baby...