Corollary: Music to My Ears XII

Winterlong
By Warren Ellis

Funny how I've come to associate music with the dark. The music that affects me most, anyway. It's half-three in the morning, it's dark and cold -- and I mean cold, cold for the first time in months, like someone flicked a switch and winter's here. And suddenly everything coming out of Winamp is taking me back 10, 15, pushing 20 years. Suddenly everything's turned back into the soundtrack to a dozen love affairs and the moments that your mind makes widescreen. Eight bars of something and you can see that girl dancing, you can see that girl waiting for you in the square at 8 with the pigeons launching away from her, you can see that girl walking towards you, and you can see the first time that girl smiled at you and meant it. And... I dunno. This is a cold country. Night comes quickly.

There's a club I'd go to where they played old-fashioned R&B music, a basement club, and we'd crawl up the stairs in need of a cigarette and some air, and when you opened the door this great column of steam would burst out and rush up into the night, visible from streets away... me and Sheelagh Baxter, sitting on the pavement and just watching it jump up at the stars.

Winter music. Comes out of the dark and just pokes at your heart a bit.

Reprinted with permission.