This column was originally published in December of 2017.
I usually write this column a few days before it actually gets published to the site, which can often make these essays maybe just a little out of step with whatever might currently be going on in the world at large. It’s usually no big deal, though a couple of times I have had to scramble and write something new on the fly, feeling it inappropriate to pine about some old pop song I love when some kind of national tragedy occurred less than 24 hours prior. But let’s hold out that it’s Monday, and that we’re all as fine as we can hope to be, and that no new living nightmare has begun to unfold on our already burning world, and that as I write this, it’s cold and rainy outside, a fairly atypical kind of day here in Central Texas, even in December.
Meanwhile, I stand in the gray, my breath visible before me, the icy, pulsing sounds of Holy Other’s “Yr Love” beating away as night slowly falls.
Released in 2010, the debut single from Berlin dark ambient producer Holy Other, “Yr Love” is the audio equivalent of winter blowing in, the dark and ominous synthetic tones of days shortening, the air getting colder and thinner, shades of white and gray and black as far as the eye can see. There’s a bleakness to it all, a realization of an icy and frostbitten end, an all-encompassing, stark whiteness that gradually swallows up everything.
But you can also dance to it.
Our heartbeats are still alive in the void somewhere.
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