By The Landlord
“January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory ... January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.” - Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
“January is my favourite month, when the light is plainest, least coloured. And I like the feeling of beginnings.” – Anne Truitt
“If I had my way, I'd remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.” – Roald Dahl
“January is the calendar’s ingrown hair.” — Stewart Stafford
“January is the month for dreaming.” - Jean Hersey
“To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
“It's June in January because I'm in love.” – Leo Robin
Today I woke up with pivoting emotions. They started with doldrums, indecision and even a dollop of extreme dread. But then thankfully they morphed into some level of defiance, direction and drive. Something, miraculously, always grows out of nothing. Or perhaps that was just the coffee, breakfast, and some circulation kicking in.
But after all, this is the month for having mixed and comparative feelings about a year ahead, one that could go in different directions. Doom and gloom can grow into optimism and opportunity, but it's not an easy passage. Such a state is particularly common and potent in January because the initial energy and enthusiasm of the new year can begin to wane. You've made some resolutions for better habits, routines and plans, perhaps you've taken some extra exercise, but some of this is already starting to fall away. And perhaps you also now realisingg just how much money you spent last month, but still have higher bills ahead. But enough about that!
That’s because while we can't always necessarily live up to our own high expectations, and always find success and happiness, a viable alternative at least is some knowledge, shape, context and a sense of meaning.
So then, providing a shaping of thoughts and knowledge this week, it's all about January, the first month of the year, seeking songs primarily about it, or set during it, and what settings, stories and rich mixture of feelings it produces.
It's a month to plan ahead, but also inevitably compare with the recent past and equivalent time last year. This week I've created some travel plans as well as creative challenges, with the idea that whatever happens, it's important to fill your life with variety rather than only repetitive routine, as that is a way to slow down the experience of time, so fast does each passing year seem to fly by.
Today is 15th January, the very bleakest of mid-winters for many, but on this day were variously born the eclectic mixture of Captain Beefheat (1941), Ivor Novello (1893) and Ivor Cutler (1923), not to mention Dr Martin Luther King Jr (1929), so good things can come out of January.
Ivor Cutler and Captain Beefheart, both born in the bleak midwinter of 15th January …
Charlotte Brontë wrote in her letters how: “January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and important reflections and a question more easily asked than answered frequently occurs viz: How have I improved the past year and with what good intentions do I view the dawn of its successor?”
While Brontë is more reflective and nuanced in her thoughts on the month, meanwhile over in America, the preacher and speaker Henry Ward Beecher declared more bombastically that: "Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past. -
Feelings of past and future, the potential for life to fall in different directions is appropriate for January, a month named after the Ancient Roman deity Janus (Ianuarius), depicted on coins and statues and art as having two heads, being the god of beginnings and endings, gates, time, duality, doorways and change. He is the gatekeeper, inaugurating the seasons, the new year. Worship of Janus dates back to the very beginnings of Rome, during the life of Romulus, and perhaps even before the foundation of the city and empire. Superstitiously the Roman army would always have to depart on a campaign via ceremonial gateways - janus or plural jani, the most famous of which was the Janus Geminus, a shrine of Janus at the north side of the Forum with a rectangular bronze structure and double doors at each end.
In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, Janus was also depicted as holding a key, and was also associated with wisdom.
Janus depicted around 1500
Your January song nominations may bring positive or negative associations, but hopefully they might also be poetic or even profound. It's wintry for many (but not our readers Down Under), and huddled around the Song Bar fireside are a few other guests ordering in hot toddys and hot chocolates.
Nineteenth-century poet Edgar Fawcett wrote an entire work on The Masque of Months in 1878. Here's how it starts:
With bright or sombre gear,
With smile or frown or song,
In a masque the months go gliding
Perpetually along.
First January is here,
With eyes that keenly glow—
A frost-mailed warrior striding
A shadowy steed of snow...
And there are even more celebrated poets giving us a January perspective. John Ruskin, who can simply never stop scribbling day or night, comes out with this:
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call,
On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew
The earth.
Meanwhile Bar regular Sylvia Plath raises John's January scene with this chilling bit of beauty:
Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves.
And here’s another favourite - Scotland’s Edwin Morgan ordering a wee dram:
The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.
January may well be frosty, but warm feelings can emerge …
Anyone doing Dry January? No one here is interested in that, as the month is already too miserable. American poet Amy Gerstler reckons, rather vividly, that "people hit the sauce in a big way all winter. Amidst blizzards they wrestle unsuccessfully with the dark comedy of their lives, laughter trapped in their frigid gizzards. Meanwhile, the mercury just plummets, like a migrating duck blasted out of the sky by some hunter in a cap with fur earflaps."
But let's close with another perspective from US writer and columnist Ellen Goodman. She's pacing up and down with her own drink, and remarks that "we spend January walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential."
So then what potential, perspective and sense of newness can we bring with this topic and who might guide them into order? This time it’s our old friend SweetHomeAlabama! Place your January songs in comments below for deadline 11pm UK time on Monday and playlists published next week. I’m looking forward to this …
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