There's probably no more depressing time of year than late January. It's as cold as it will get, the days are still too short, the holidays are long past and the end of winter is still a long way off. In the time of COVID January also means sickness and death.
This January is not as deadly as the last but the embers of hope stirring then are almost burned out. January 6th was a horrible shock, but the 20th brought an end to the Trump presidency. A year later the hopes I had on that day are pretty much dead. Republicans have not paid any political price for trying to overthrow democracy. Democrats are unable to pass legislation because two of their own Senators refuse to suspend the filibuster. This year will likely bring Republican control of Congress, and an end to any possible hope for the new birth of freedom this country desperately needs.
I walk about my days this January with premonitions of doom and rumors of war in Eastern Europe. This country's death spiral has not been averted in any perceptible way. I don't really think there's much of a future for America.
Apart from going to work every day and spending time with family and friends, I am not sure what else to do. I try to find solace as always in music. I have found that lush 1960s baroque pop soothes me like little else. I got introduced to this genre through the early Bee Gees, and last winter listened to Scott Walker non-stop. This year it's Lee Hazlewood.
"Some Velvet Morning" with Nancy Sinatra has the doomy, ethereal sound of my soul at this particular moment in its grooves. Hazlewood doesn't really sing. He sort of intones in a deep voice while Nancy does ghostly background vocals. I am not sure what this song is even supposed to be about, but in it I hear the sounds of the crisis of the soul. God knows it's a resonant feeling with me right now.
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