"wintering" (original piano composition)

a lullaby for the living

winter is a celebration of life. life that was, life that is, and life that is yet to be. while the season of silence has little chance of matching springtime’s vibrant vitality or summer’s bursting bounty, we must never mistake slumber for surrender. i realize some may not share these sentiments for arguably the least popular season, but i’ve always found glory in its grey skies that are less dreary than dreamy, and less bare than bearing for birth in a matter of months. to be clear, i’m not taking the position that seasons don’t sprinkle our lives with their predictable patterns, merely that they don’t always correspond to the calendar. for who can argue against the presence and possibility of new beginnings in winter and tragic endings in summer? if you believe, as i do, that there is no truer teacher than nature, we must widen the lens that each season solely symbolizes one holiness of this human experience. as it so happens, there are times in our life when they changeably coincide at once, an entire year delivered within a day. so as winter’s whimsies sweep through our spirits this year, let us observe our own uprooting before reveling in rebirth not despite our difficulties - but because of them. as poet mary oliver softly insisted: “maybe what cold is, is the time we measure the love we have always had, secretly for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love for the warm river of the i.” this winter, i wish you all a spoonful of warmth and wonder at the life we’re forever learning to live, each according to our own rhymes, reasons, and naturally - seasons.

in this composition, dusk descends upon a silent and stalwart sky. as evening falls, a festival of flurries gives way to ivory pillows dancing down to the earth’s embrace. throughout the night, the trees crystallize inside their new cocoons, emerald edifices lighting up the dark like discovered gems. and although it is still several hours before sunrise, the sky is already swimming in a spool of cotton candy wool courtesy of its nocturnal accolades. as the last snowflake lingers like a lullaby, dawn suddenly sets the land ablaze as a yawning and yearning sun emerges. the world awakens to an overnight transformation as we are reminded yet again of the succulence of surprise, and how even after all these years the first snowfall of the season still has us running to the window, all of us wide-eyed children marveling at what can only be described as the manifestation of a miracle.

self-recorded and performed on piano
📸: oleg demakov