wintersong

Someone just gave me Sarah McLaughlan's new album, Wintersong.
Sarah has a special place in my heart; I associate her first album, Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, with all of my 17 year-old-memories: falling in love for the first time, performing one of my songs in front of an audience for the first time, living away from home and abroad for the first time, etc.
So someone just gave me the album. What I didn't know was that it was a Christmas album. Now, I categorically hate Christmas albums, or rather pop covers of Christmas albums. I like classic jazz or church choir renditions at this time of year, but there is nothing more irking to me than Christina Aguilera singing Have Yourself a Merry Merry Christmas.
Sarah's album is nice; it's still a Christmas album so I can't gush here, but I really like her cover of Joni Mitchell's classic song, River, which I just put up on my page.
The crazy thing about all this is that it is not even Halloween yet and I am already listening to Christmas music and getting nostalgic and excited for winter to come.

New York is wonderful in the winter. Night comes early and the streets light up with white light, the storefronts fill with beautiful and extravagant designs, churches seem particularly magical, people seem particularly nice, and the air is cleaner and crisper than usual.
There was a piece written in the forties for the New Yorker by a man who had just arrived in the city for the first time. In it, he captures the impressions of a city wrapped up in fashionable coats and the arms of attractive others as he sat observing from a seat in an empty diner.
I love that image.
It's how I feel here at this time of year- peacefully alone, content to be home watching the world rush by.