This piece originates as part of a very rough stream of consciousness, not all of which I have yet used (hence the ‘Part 1’ in the title, as the remaining bits will likely find their way into follow-up pieces). This first segment deals with the age-old phenomenon of ‘Holiday Malaise’, which affects a lot of people, especially as they get older, and leave youth behind. I have taken a good-sized chunk of that SOC, cleaned it up, trimmed it, gave it a quick bath and shave, and tried to put it into an equally rough rhyme scheme, like a cheap, Salvation Army suit.

For various reasons, the end-of-year Holiday season (Christmas, Chanukah, Yule, New Year’s, etc), is often very difficult for many people, and for all sorts of different reasons. In my particular case, being in my forties, and still single and childless is something that really hits home at this time of year. Whilst Valentine’s Day tends to be more of a stinging slap, it’s at least over after that one particular day. Advent and Christmas, however, is a far more insidious and slowly descending depressive pit, where it’s all too easy to start dwelling on all the failures in your life.

Two particular sparks for this section are the (now traditional) Holiday song: We Need a Little Christmas, which first appeared as a show-tune in Jerry Herman’s 1966 Broadway musical, Mame, and was first sung (and made popular), by Angela Lansbury. I always liked the song when I was a kid, but it’s only since I’ve gotten older, and things such as loneliness, life failures, and depression have gradually burned away most of the Holiday Season’s lustre for me, that I suddenly, truly grok some of the lyrics. Indeed, there have been quite a few years, where I could find nothing to celebrate about the whole thing.

Hence, there came one recent year, where the lyrics:

"For I’ve grown a little leaner,
grown a little colder,
grown a little sadder,
and grown a little older…"

were like that proverbial psychic slap across the face. I said to myself, out loud: “I get that now!”

Not surprisingly, that song has been covered many times since then, and also not surprisingly, that particular verse is often omitted, which, in my opinion, completely neuters the song of its original intent—instead of a powerful statement of trying to desperately grab for some small piece of joy in the midst of bitterness and depression, the neutered version instead becomes yet another treacly, saccharine affirmation. No thank you.

A second source of inspiration comes from an interview of Will Sheff, that I recently read. Will Sheff is the lead-singer of the Indy-Rock band Okkervil River, and is also the co-founder (along with Jonathan Meiburg), of another Indy band, which I have a musical obsession with, namely Shearwater. Whereas Jonathan has always been the operatic visionary, spinning achingly gorgeous musical journeys, Will often made very pithy (and often wry) observations.

In the aforementioned interview, Will talked about: "...that moment when you recognize that things in your life are dead or have outlived their relevancy, it's a free moment. It's a really, really scary moment, but it's a free moment, because suddenly you get the opportunity to go on to the next thing that you gotta be."