Every time I get into my car, I have about 75 CDs at my disposal. Inevitably, I spend the first few minutes of every drive trying to find that one CD that most perfectly fits the weather and my mood, failing much more often than not, forced to fall back on the same few discs that happen to be in heavy rotation for me at the moment.
Well, this afternoon I experienced one of those truly perfect moments of synchronicity, and I can�t even take credit for it. It snowed here in Athens, GA last night, and while that might elicit a big �so what?� from our neighbors to the north, it�s a pretty big deal here in the Deep South, big enough to shut down UGA for the day, at least.
It�s probably been a few years now since I�ve even seen snow, and just like anything else, I�m sure it�s one of those things you start to take for granted when you see it all the time.
Anyway, I bundled up for a run to the store around noon, got in the car, then realized I had left those CDs in the house. It was only a 4-5 minute drive, so I figured I�d just flip on the radio and forget about it. I know better than to go anywhere besides the college station (WUOG), but even still, I was nothing short of overwhelmed to hear Sufjan Stevens� �Holland� coming back at me from the airwaves. Not because it was such a surprise to hear an indie-rock radio station playing an indie-rock artist, but because the music just seemed to make everything in that frozen, crystalline world even clearer.
I was admittedly a latecomer to the brilliance of Greetings from Michigan, and I think it�s simply because it only recently got cold enough for me to really appreciate it. It�s such a perfect winter album that I�m positive it would have made my year-end top 20 if I lived in Minnesota, Maine, or of course Michigan itself. Shit, we were still getting� crunk with Lil Jon while y�all up north were getting turned on to this gem of an album.
�Fragile� is the best word I can come up with to describe how the world looks when it�s covered in snow and ice, and it�s also the first adjective I think of when I hear �Holland,� a fragile little sketch of a song with only a few evocative lyrics and no real chorus to speak of at all. This winter weather makes everything feel muted, and that�s how Sufjan sounds when he sings, like there�s all this sadness and grief and regret, but also longing and hope and happiness, but that it�s all been buried just beneath the surface, under a few inches of snow.