Another winter song to see us through the dimmest days, when being poised on the precipice of spring makes the icy setbacks that much more difficult to bear. I’ve often been called cold, or detached, and I always sort of wore that as a badge of pride. Better to be cold than to be hurt. Better to strike first than have your heart pierced and your life marred forever after. What a foolish attitude to have, or in my case to pretend. A song now for the supposedly-cold-hearted among us:
Come to meRun to meDo and be done with meCold, cold, coldDon’t I exist for you?Don’t I still live for you?Cold, cold, cold
From the same exquisite album that brought us this winter song, ‘Cold’ was an ideal companion piece, a delicate ballad that gently ticks off a list of adoration and celebration of someone who may or may not be into you. The first person who gave me this song loved me more than I could ever love her. She probably still does. My heart remains icily indifferent.
Everything I possess, given with tendernessWrapped in a ribbon of glassTime it may take us but God only knowsHow I’ve paid for those things in the past
Dying is easy it’s living that scares me to death, ooh, yeahI could be so content hearing the sound of your breath, ooh, yeah
Cold is the colour of crystal the snowlightThat falls from the heavenly skiesCatch me and let me dive underFor I want to swim in the pools of your eyes
I wanna be with you babyOh-oh, slip me inside of your heartDon’t I belong to you baby?Don’t you know that nothing can tear us apart?Come on now, come on now, come on nowTelling you thatI loved you right from the startBut the more I want you the less I getAin’t that just the way things are?
Sometimes it’s difficult to muster up much compassion for our younger selves, for the people we once were who didn’t know any better, or who did but simply never acted on it. The clarity of how those aspects differ is something we never want to admit. How much easier on our conscience would it be to just pretend confusion, to act like we never knew we were doing the wrong thing? I always knew, and to my shameful acknowledgment, I did the awful things anyway. When shielding the heart, you run the risk of wounding others with your armor, and at a certain point that risk became a reward. The warped masochistic tendencies of a young man lost in the turmoil of not knowing who he was – the casualties left on love’s battlefield – the coldness, the precision, the detachment…
The sake of survival.
Winter has frozen usLet love take hold of us(Cold, cold, cold)Now we are shiveringBlue ice is glittering(Cold, cold, cold)
Cold is the colour of crystal the snowlightThat falls from the heavenly skiesCatch me and let me dive underFor I want to swim in the pools of your eyes
