Snow

When I listen to this song (or the whole album actually) I'm left wondering whether the music should be beating me into a submissive, blubbering mess or whether I should be left feeling inspired by that dark, peculiar beauty which permeates much of Emilliana's music. As jeisenbe put it, "either way, it's optimistic when it should be melancholy and i adore it".

Some of the lyrics in this song just kill me:

"Leaning on my favorite side And I wondered where you are and realize Something is painted in the snow that you'd like"

Fortunately I've never lost anyone so close to me, but I pity the person who can't find the humanity in that. There's something so natural and unforced about it. Someone close to you dies and your first instinct is surely not to compose a dirge or to erect a mural, but rather to talk to them as though you'd forgotten they'd ever left: "Today I saw something painted in the snow that you'd like..."

Ugh. By the end of this album I feel like I've toured the precipice of human misery and returned a better, more hopeful man. It takes a special kind of song-writer to acheive that kind of optimism from so pesimistic a subject matter.

I believe this is a true story... my interpretation only.... In real life, Emiliana's boyfriend died and this song is the beginning of the end of her grieving process.

She starts out by talking to him, a good bit of time after he has been laid in the grave. I picture her looking out a window, onto a wintery Icelandic scene, and saying to him without much thought, "You won't believe what I just found out...". Telling him of the events of the day... the current things that come to her mind that he would have some knowledge about. Then, thoughts naturally turn towards him: "Something is painted in the snow that you'd like."

"Finally I'm going all sane"... perhaps she is finally able to come to terms with his death and is will be able to live life again. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory.

Cheers, my babies... -steve

I can't quite explain what this song means to me, but it's absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure if she wants to live her life over again, to spend time with someone who is only in her past; or, if she regains the desire to live just to see someone who she realizes she wants to see again, if only once and indefinitely in the future. either way, it's optimistic when it should be melancholy and i adore it.

jeisenbe, you add a great deal to the songs meaning. "We can't care for nothining, no way". How do you ever stop loving someone?

i think it's "before i died" which would make your interpretations make more sense, i think.

dustybreeze, yep, it's seems pretty clear now that she's saying "before I died". She "died" when he died. It does make more sense. Well, time marches on, and she has a new album out released several days ago. I think Emiliana is moved on! However, I will love Snow for many many years... since I--as many do--still morn for an intimate lose.

The picture it gave me was this: Her husband has been in a coma for a long time, and she is coming to terms with the fact that he's never going to wake up. And she's seeing all the other people move on from their pain and find new love... "she's getting married on the fifth time round" ... and realizes that she can too. So her mourning is ending, and she's leaving him behind and moving on to find new love.

And hopes to one day see him again.