At the very beginning of each year, I tell myself (I almost sing to myself) to remember how I can accomplish everything that I want because sky is the limit. The greatest thing about the sky is that we share it with everyone. The worst thing about the sky is that it is almost constantly dark in January. Turn off your Christmas lights and give me a signal If you think January is the most depressing month of the year. There never seems to be enough time but every January, I have a feeling like there is nothing else but time. Time is a soup, summer is a spoon and winter is a fork. You get what I mean? For me, time=music. Music is like a warm soup in January. Music is the feeling you have when you everything has ended but at the same time, it looks like everything has just begun. So, let’s begin.
I would love to download a weather forecast app that will tell me how often will Bjork bring snow to my vulnerable heart. As someone who struggles with seasonal affective disorder, I can only imagine how depressed I would be If I lived in Iceland where seasons change from mild winter to strong winter. Going through a break up on Iceland is probably like getting tanned in hell. When Bjork suddenly released her album Vulnicura in January, I was sure that this year was going to be an intersection of great music and great heartbreaks. They all say how they can’t live without us and then they don’t die would be a suitable name for this album. The queen from Iceland wrote the record after the break up with her partner and father of her child, multimedia artist Mathew Barney. Vulnicura is word game in Latin. Vulnus means bruise and Cura means cure. Contrary to Adele’s 25 (whose melodramatic songs are not my cup of tea) Bjork created love album that is full of lament but manages to avoid falling into cheesy pathetic reminiscence. Last time I checked, my gender identity was still male, but Bjork’s struggle with being a single mother made me identify with her. If January of 2015 could be described in words, it would be We carry the same wound\But have different cures\Similar injuries\But opposite remedies.
Last January would not be the same without The Decemberists. The album title What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World refers to Barrack Obama’s speech about the tragedy in Sandy Hook school. Would We Change, We Had to Change Some are the lines in opening track The Singer Addresses His Audience that made me wonder how will I make this year different than the previous one. Will I be different? For a long time, I had a feeling like everyone wants change but no one wants to change. I craved for someone to change me and that is when these lyrics hit me But we’re not so starry eyed anymore, like the perfect paramour you were in your letters, And won’t it all just come around and make you, Let it all unbreak you to the day you met her, And it’d make you better. This is probably one of the best songs Decemberist have ever made. And this was probably my favorite January ever.
Ladies and gentleman, fasten your seatbelts and start your engines. We are time travelling through 2015 to find out which artists moved us from this planet to the outer space. Music is the ultimate time machine.
