Between Sondheim interviews, Madonna performances, and Taylor Swift’s brilliance, this video was recommended on my last visit to YouTube, most likely from this schmaltzy post, so I’m repeating the sentiment here because it’s that most wonderful time of the year when schmaltz is king and we are mere subjects to its wish and whim. Tonight, that wish is for something slower and quieter, something that lasts beyond the flare and blare, and this six-hour-plus video of soothing jazz should be enough to see almost anyone through the night. It also gave me the title for this blog post, where words and images and music collide at certain moments, ideally creating the space for something beautiful and wondrous, to which you are invited to bring your own memories and moments.
It’s a hygge sort of December night, when the word is at its darkest but still illuminating little points of light to help guide us along the way. The path is best taken with a warm cup of tea and a warm woolen mantle you may pull closer around your shoulders. A cozy corner chair, beside which a candle burns and a book awaits, is another ideal setting. Or maybe it’s on a banquette against a frosted window pane, the kind that’s to be found in an old Victorian home where you might have spent your childhood holidays like I did. Maybe it’s the simple and safe vantage point of your bed, piled as high or low with pillows and blankets as you wish while you reach out your hand only as long as you need to turn off the light.
Insert your own winter memories here. Inject your own holiday fantasias, real or imagined or somewhere in-between, and let this gentle music wash over you while you indulge in some mild reminiscing. Too often we fight the past – either in pretending it never happened or in trying to re-live it repeatedly – and those fights serve only to weaken our present. On some nights, however, the past can be a calming balm, if we choose to look at it in such a way, to remember the good bits and even some of the bad bits so long as we know they can do us no harm.
