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“Post-holing in Rocky Mountain National Park is a strong memory – basically that entire month is a winter memory. Minnesota in winter time…wrapping my face during the polar vortex to get to the Caf and sledding down the hill on a caf tray.”
“Spending Christmas with my family of origin at a poorly heated summer cabin near Brainerd. We had to hike through snow for a long ways to get to the cabin (impassable by car), dragging our gifts/belongings with us, and I spent the Christmas complaining under a blanket with a space heater in my lap. That being said, I also have one of the most beautiful pictures of my late dad from that trip, so kind of a yay-boo.”
performed at and written for The Tank on 2/5/2019
if you’d like to contribute to the almanac send a voice note of your winter memories to gcoleman.mn[at]gmail.com . please include your name and the city where you live .
midwinter almanac – score
compiled by gabriel coleman
it’s january 31st , 1995 and outside the window there is snow on the ground .
[mom birth]
a year later in 1996 the temperature in Minnesota hit a record low .
[mom sled]
time passes , ’97 , ’98 , ’99 …
[footsteps 1 fade up]
[lena pink]
… the 2000s come and go and every year on my birthday …
[ben fort]
… i would wake up to the gift of fresh snow on the ground .
[landon nose]
[footsteps 1 full volume]
as I continued through school and went off to college , having snow on my birthday became a kind of barometer – a reminder that despite hardship and a changing world things were okay .
[footsteps 2 fade up]
following 2013’s polar vortex – the last three years of college were relatively mild , but the snow continued to appear .
[footsteps 2 full volume]
[footsteps 3 switch]
and even after moving into the warm arms of atlantic last year I still found snow on my doorstep at the end of january .
but this year the snow didn’t come , despite my hopes during the squall last wednesday nothing stuck and it struck something in me that’s been struck more and more often ,
[remember 1 fade to full]
the idea that the world i grew up in no longer exists – that it hardened alongside me during my adolescence – while I wasn’t looking .
[remember 2 fade to full]
and so i cast around to family and friends , digging for images and sounds in the hopes that –
[remember 3 fade to full]
even as a predictable climate fades from our planet – by documenting these memories I could freeze some part of the planet that raised me
[piano begins]
find a place of stillness in the motion .
[beat]
[remember compress/fade down slightly]
[lena piles]
[landon siberia?]
[ben coats]
[mom hills]
[all fade]
[footsteps 1 fades into phone fuzz]
[fuzz fades]
Contributers:
Deanne Coleman (Randolph, MN)
Landon Kramer (Danbury, CT/Onalaska, WI)
Miller LaMotte (Anoka/Minneapolis, MN)
Lena Greenberg (Quetzaltenango, Guatemala/Brooklyn, NY)
Benjamin Coleman (Randolph/Coon Rapids, MN)
Cosimo Pori (Brooklyn, NY/Albuquerque, NM)
Katherine Maxwell (Chicago, IL)
Kimberley Allmann (Farmington, MN)
Lynn Yellen (Brooklyn, NY)