Music and art are a significant part of what encompasses our experience and values as generations pass on. Listening to music maybe just a simple pastime for some, but for others, it saves them from the desperation and chill or the daily struggles in our lives.

Despite the cold,

Or maybe in spite of it,

The music plays louder and louder,

Carried over the chilling wind,

Warm as it approaches me

And envelopes my body in its familiar notes.

The chill seems like a fleeting sensation,

A distant memory now,

Ephemeral in light of the timelessness of the refrain,

The folklore and flames,

Its comforting intensity.

I look into the numbing rain and hear summers on the beach,

The re and mi together creating the weekend when we escaped the humidity,

Hid in the mountains,

Watched the trees hide under the fog.

My tears may be freezing, rolling down my cheeks,

But I hear the notes and I don't need to see the warm air to feel it.

Other may call it insanity,

An imaginary place in a mind like mine,

But I live by the life in those chords,

The notes at the start of Moon River,

The despair in the bass,

The melancholy in the melody.

Even if they may not be the same accompaniments,

There are melodies for you to feel,

And others for me.

Does that make them any less real?

So, the music grows,

Fighting the chilling wind blowing so loud to drown me out,

And the tune plays louder and louder,

Engulfing my body and making the cold subordinate to its dynamic,

Whether to prove a point or to save me, I don't know.

I watch the trees and the mountains and the summers and the flames

And forget the chill and the numbness of today

And get lost in the permanence of the refrain.

The euphony works against nature,

Against the future, against the now,

And it fights the wind until it wins,

Despite the cold,

Or maybe in spite of it.