Darkness Washed Over the Dude

A New Winter

The holiday season is closing out. Here at the shore, dry Christmas trees blow around curbs in cold, dusty winds. Merry little tumbleweeds. Deflated reindeer scatter across browning winter lawns. Santa Wuz Here. Town crews are taking down lights and mangers and menorahs, and we’re left in the quiet off-season of Asbury Park, New Jersey.

I’m told (often and repeatedly) that winter is a great time for creativity, though I tend not to naturally feel this way. I spend these months chipping away at ideas, little by little. Putting in the hours every day, as I always do, to write songs. But feeling mostly the resistance of short, cold, grumpy little days pining for warm relief.

I try to fight this. I put on fleece-lined water-resistant clothes I ordered from the internet and walk with my face pointed to the sun in the mornings before work (is this rock and roll?). I drink St. John’s Wort by a space heater and tell myself The Velvet Underground could never have formed or existed in Key West, Florida in 1964 (is this rock and roll?). Mostly though, the last few years I’ve found that releasing already-written music of mine in or around wintertime gives me a form of action against these cold, sludgy early months that slow my natural rhythm for songwriting.

And so, I have a collection of songs coming out in March this year. More on that soon.

For now, Happy New Year!

My writing corner in the plants.