Michael Edwards

The BC westcoast winters are largely grey and rain-filled affairs. It’s true that there’s a supreme lack of sunlight and that many are seasonally affected. And the dark times around the winter holidays and Christmas are rife with stressors (financial/social/otherwise). But I’m really interested in thinking about what these dark times sound like. Their ringing, their sonic signature. What are these words that speak into or from the gloom and what can we hear echoing back? Is it echo or response?

You see, the rhetoric around the “westcoast winter” is the dreariness of the whole thing. It’s the cloud layer sitting just above heads and the king tides rising up to toes & ankles. It creates something that feels like a thin existence between sky and sea.

And I think in this thin place, there is a narrowing of vision and hearing that takes hold. It’s a timeworn type of gazing and attending closely to reckon with or recognize the things we can see/hear when a slate-grey veil drops on us, muffling the banter. Asking: What is closest? What matters most?

In this way, the solstice sounds like an AM radio station, a narrow bandwidth. With crackle and static. It’s our job, as we listen to tune-in, adjusting the dial to the voices, to interpret words for their deepest meaning. Hearing the damp and frostless days speak. And as the light comes back we can remember the slim light of December, what we parsed from the crackle and carry it into the new year.