SONG:
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: “Humans Have Hidden Sensory System”, LiveScience (via Yahoo! News), 8 Dec 2009, as used in the post “Skin sense.”
ABSTRACT: So, this is probably the geekiest thing I’ve ever done on here. Here’s an axiom: The longer one puts off recording vocals, the higher the probability of one being physically unable to do them. In this case, laryngitis. I couldn’t even talk, much less sing. So I got a ringer to turn the song into an Arab Strap-style spoken word piece. The well-spoken man’s name is Obadiah. He sounds nice, doesn’t he? He’s one of the speech synthesis voices at the MARY text-to-speech web demo. Other than the fact that “black” and “ask” don’t have an assonance in British English, I was quite happy with him.
The song itself was a confluence of two things. First, I love the idea of a hidden sense that we all have but aren’t normally aware of. Made me think of sense-deprivation tanks and deep meditation. Second, I wanted to write a winter solstice song – one that wasn’t necessarily astronomical or Christmas-oriented.
So. There’s this phenomenon in hypothermia cases. Shortly before the end, some victims will strip off all their clothes, because in a last-ditch effort to maintain its temperature, the body dilates all the capillaries in the skin and flushes warm blood from the body core out to the skin and extremities. Suddenly, everything feels warm again. This always struck me as a kind of trick – it’s hard not to think of winter doing this to people with some kind of intent or personality. This song isn’t telling that story – the narrator here isn’t dying of hypothermia – but he is communicating with winter. Somewhere outside. Under the shadows.
LYRICS:
> Dear winter, I closed my eyes the way you asked
> and I stood there in the black
>
> I could barely find the sense of mind to cover up my ears
> Your frozen tears falling on my coat,
> your stinging whispers wound around my throat
> Before it all went numb – and I felt something else come
>
> CH:
> I could see you with my skin, in the movement of the air
> On the longest………. night…….of the year.
>
>
> Dear winter, I can hear you in a way,
> all the silent things you had to say
> While muffled in my gloves and boots,
> and woolen socks and a second-hand snow suit
> Your breath was almost bitter on my tongue,
> as my words hung beneath the sky…
> as something else moved, unheard, on high.
>
> CH:
> I could see you with my skin, in the movement of the air
> On the longest………. night…….of the year.
>
> BR:
> The sky opened like a window
> as the night stretched on so widely
> Dear winter, I can’t feel your touch inside me,
> And I am blind. And I am numb.
> But I felt something wordless come
> I can’t begin to say its name, but sensed it all the same.
>
> And I could see you with my skin, in the movement of the air
> On the longest………. night…….of the year.
>
> CH:
> And I could see you with my skin, in the movement of the air
> On the longest………. night…….of the year.
>