Ambient Poise

I’d be a terrific Northerner if I could ever get over being Southern. The quiet forces of snow-covered mornings and brittle-edged woods—those forces appeal to me. So does George Winston.

Winston is an artist you can listen to and forget you’re listening, while your mind wanders off into landscapes he paints with music. He plays piano solos as if to an audience of one. His DECEMBER album is based on snow, but as I’m from Florida, I see rain, dripping rain, running rain on gray days when you don’t have to go anywhere, when you can stay inside, drink coffee, think. The Monks of Santo Domingo may be great for a hangover, but George Winston makes space for contemplation.

I live in a little book-lined cottage in midst of a piney wood with smooth streets through a well-spaced neighborhood. In the springtime, I can open the windows and let birdsong fill up the house until it feels like the roof will lift right off. Sigh. Winston’s pianosong chimes in with the birds and blends the music of the outside with his own, and distracts me from the less aesthetic ambiance of my neighbor harvesting every single last tree in his yard, or the garbage truck growling down the road, or the housing development going up a mile away to provide more human noise and less bird habitat.

I’d love to hear the birds and they’d be fabulous, but I’m too well distracted by the mechanics of human life. I can’t listen to just nothing because there is no just nothing. Noises are like noses, but without the “I” to see what they’re sticking into.

George Winston solves my soul’s quest for free range.