Meditation on The Mind of Winter song by David Duchovny.
David Duchovny's newest album is Gestureland. The song Mind of Winter is not my favorite song off the album, but it is the song that causes me to think the most. The Mind of Winter reference is to a poem by Wallace Stevens called The Snow Man. Some recent viewers of The Chair likely heard David Duchovny strumming his guitar and singing a few lines from Mind of Winter and heard Sandra Oh say "That's the only rock song I've heard that references Wallace Stevens" With all of that as the backdrop of this song, I wanted to share my thoughts on the lyrics.
First, let me express what the Stevens poem means to me. Worth noting that I did not study this poem in any academic sense or read much on it and so, my thoughts on it are my own and the reader of this may not agree or may have, in fact, more knowledge. However, these are my meditations. So, when I read The Snow Man I see two themes in opposition to each other (which is something that I enjoy).
The first is that the snowman must devoid himself of the emotion connected with winter to appreciate the landscape of winter. The second is that the snowman must be himself well familiar with cold and winter to see beyond the misery of winter and become unfeeling within that landscape.
The first appeals to me as a philosophy in that if we can devoid ourselves of preferring the beach in summer or knowing any of the literary imagery of the winter months or having walked in a snowstorm or fallen on ice, then we can experience the now and the moment and beauty of frost and junipers shagged with ice. It is the same way to me of how I see the beauty of the desert which is the environment in which I was raised and in which I now live. It has an amazing beauty if you stop associating it with concepts of a barren wasteland of heat and thirst.
The second causes my heart to feeze but I understand it so well. When you have lived without rain, then you can become accustomed to drought. In the poem then we take all the imagery of winter cold to heart and think that because I have not had warmth I have become immune to the element of cold. My emotions have frozen over because I have not felt the emotions of passion or caring I might prefer to have known.
This frames me, then, in a way for the contradictory elements in David Duchovny's song The Mind of Winter. The refrain hook of I swear that I'll be simpler is repeated in a song that seems to be not simple at all and sung by a character so complex that simpler is not possible. I have to remind myself that this is not a song of The Snow man. It is a song reflecting only a reference to the phrase The Mind of Winter from the poem The Snow Man.
So the song begins with a journey. As opposed to the snowman who cannot journey. There was weather everywhere on this journey and I bring in the emotion I have to the concept of "weather everywhere". That makes it a hard and dangerous "stormy" journey. A pretender on the throne could be someone usurping your place in a marriage or a stepfather to your kids, but it could also be a King or President who doesn't really belong in the position- but in looking back there didn't seem to be a silver-tongued pleaser who could rise to the times - another love to take the place in the relationship you've lost or possibly the person who could unite a nation?
Then the character explains the reason for the journey- if you hadn't put the words on me - if I could grow up and throw away the maps and geography. Did you tell me I was smart? Did you tell me I was born poor? Did you tell me I was a man and made me think toxic masculinity was the norm? Was I expected to get married? Was I expected to be a father? Was I expected to be a stud in order to be a man? How much of who I am and what I've done in my life is because of who I was told I was and what I was supposed to do? Can I become a better, more self-aware and self-actualized human being through this journey? Wow- that's a really great verse.
Then the chorus and If I come back sounds like he is not sure he will make it back due to the dangers of the journey, but it could also be that he will choose not to come back to the life he led or from which he fled. Perhaps he will be an expatriate never to return to his country. But if he does come back he will be simpler (I will wait to discuss this further). Then the refrain from The Snowman I"'ll have a mind of winter. (a mind that will live in the moment now on whatever landscape he finds himself, will not judge the moment or the landscape based on preconceptions or will learn to accept the frozen conditions of a life without love?}
The next verse is the verse I have the most difficultly understanding. I keep thinking there are references contained within this verse not to the Mind of Winter, but to other works I cannot connect. Certainly, the person is lost at sea without land in sight. Yet, he does not accept a landless condition or the beauty of the sea as a merman (a play on Snowman) might. This is a desperate man with no end in sight to his misery and in the fog which I am interpreting as the noise, the cloud, the environment which surrounds him, he sees blame and people pointing at him, blaming him, shaming him. Perhaps they are keeping him from the land because he is not deserving. He falls to his knees among the birds and dying bees. He is desperate. When I think of the birds and the bees I think of sex. But why the dying bees? Here I think this is a call to an environmental awakening because the bees are dying, folks! Then he tries to find his tongue to trace the maiden name of God. Ok, I still think of sex, but I also think of mother earth. I have heard about the rare Jewish use of the name El Shaddai which means nurturing God or the God that should be sufficient? I don't know enough about it to know if it fits within these words.
I need to have more knowledge or more meditation but for now, I think it has the double meaning of we are adrift with no way to solve our ecological disaster and restore mother earth and the man is adrift and is to blame and he must find his connection to the sacred within women so he can understand and relate to the harm he's done. Again, this is the verse I am the least sure about even my own interpretations or what I am reading into them.
However, the next verse reinforces what I believe I understood from the verse before which is that nature is wounded and we need to throw away all of our deadly philosophy around conquering, claiming, drilling and mining and learn to live in a more harmonious coexistent with mother earth. Also, that if I can feel my own pain and the pain of others and live the isolation I deserve then I can arrive at a place where I can both appreciate the landscape and the life I have at the moment I am in now AND that I have adjusted to the lack of warmth in my life enough to not seek warmth for the sake of warmth alone. Either way, the verse takes us back to the reason for the journey - I need to learn who I would be if I could shed myself of your deadly philosophy.
Then the chorus again. So does simpler mean I will have fewer expectations for myself? Does it mean I will stop consuming as much and try to leave a footprint of less ecological impact? I think it means both. I will have a mind of winter and be ok with where I am at now because that is all any of us can do. I will live life simpler so I don't destroy the planet more?
I think this song is very reflective of the title of the album Gestureland because we all want to reflect our identity and what it means - are we woke, or we politically correct, are we fuck the establishment, but all of that is complicated. Does the snowman have to wear a sign saying snowman for you to know that's what he is? Less noise. Simpler. But then I start thinking of everything is noise, and then the I can't reverse line from chapter and verse, and I am back to all the songs in the album which, without this being a theme album, fits so well together. Then I relisten to it all and find this is the song I stop at to mediate on a bit more.
Go to DavidDuchovny.com to read the lyrics to Mind of Winter and to wherever you find music to listen to it.