Intangible Rooms

Including a Christmas mindset, where greatness starts, sage advice, ghosts as hosts, and roomfuls of ideas

Christmas in the room

Hola mi gente,

Another winter solstice has passed and the days are getting longer. Our friend Jody made his annual trek through the neighborhood, bearing both gifts and encouragement to shine our lights bright in a world that needs it.

So, too, has Christmas come and gone. Our living room will keep the Yuletide mood a little while longer, though—the tree lights are still aglow with stockings hung from a wintery shelf, and a YouTube fire illuminates signs of holiday activity in the moments a Christmas movie isn’t playing.

One of my holiday blind spots is that I’ve never seen the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. That changed this year and I can’t believe it took me so long. My favorite scenes were when Santa Claus speaks Dutch to the little girl and when Mr. Gailey defends the lovely intangibles of faith, love, kindness, and joy.

For something as predictable as the holiday season, it made me think about how Christmas is not so easily defined. Its celebrations unfold across a variety of spaces, sometimes in simple rooms. Yet those walls are not always as definite as one might think—they’re even intangible at times.

So with that in mind, here are 5 connected things:

1. The Sufjan Stevens song “Christmas in the Room” was initially released on the epically titled Astral Inter Planet Space Captain Christmas Infinity Voyage: Songs for Christmas, Volume 8 and later as part of his Christmas compilation Silver & Gold. I love the way the song strips away the excesses of Christmas, making it “just another ordinary day.” Rather than minimizing its uniqueness, I think Stevens is holding space for all our days—both the joyful and tragic—as something special. He presents the dualities of life in a way that empowers the listener with agency. The song is one of transitioning from something familiar to something new—in this case, committing to a new life with a loving partner—but its message could just as well be learning to cope after losing one. The bridge of the song even mentions death, perhaps as a reminder that without death there is no life. It may seem odd to sing of death in a Christmas song, but one of the most impactful realities of the Christian celebration of Christmas is that Christ—God himself incarnate—was born into humanity for the very purpose of one day dying a sinner’s death, as foretold in Isaiah 53. Joy and suffering are inextricably linked, and this isn’t lost on Stevens. “Christmas in the Room” is a beautiful reflection on embracing intangibles in a practical way so that we can live more fully.

2. It doesn’t get much simpler than the White Stripes song “Little Room.” On the 50 second track, Jack White sings of starting out in a little room, getting so good that a bigger room is merited, and eventually realizing the value of that little room and going back to it. The same idea is expressed by Mac Miller in his song “Rick’s Piano”:

   E.T.'s not dead, he's just a little bit faded
   Please don't give me any credit, that's how people get jaded
   Please don't nod your head, and please don't tell me I made it
   'Cause people start to get worse once they think they the greatest

   Referencing Jack White, André 3000 said that “greatness starts in little rooms” at Outkast’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s created and sustained by what author David Epstein would call “inside the box” living. In the world’s big room of endless possibilities, what actually make us better are the constraints and limitations of a little room. This past fall, I listened a lot to A Letter Home, Jack White and Neil Young’s collaboration that was recorded using a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph—its own little room. The album uses constraints to create a vintage aesthetic that effectively bridges time, giving Young the chance to communicate with his late mother. What are the little rooms in your life that you need to get back to? How might they help you grow?

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas turned 60 this year. To honor the occasion, NPR Music’s Felix Contreras spoke about the special’s musical legacy. He describes how CBS initially rejected the special, in part because they disliked the accompaniment of Vince Guaraldi’s jazz-infused Christmas music. But the network also objected to the show’s adult themes of materialism and faith, along with the use of untrained children to voice the Peanuts characters. Fortunately, the creators would not compromise their vision, and the network went ahead and aired it anyways. The rest is history. A Charlie Brown Christmas was an instant success and went on to become a classic, due in large part to the very things the network disliked about it. Sometimes you need to step out of the little rooms people put you in. It reminded me of another story about a pupil ignoring the advice of a mentor. In his insightful (and honest) little book Improbable Mentors & Happy Tangents, Michael Perry writes about mentoring Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and the ill advice he offered him to “lose that falsetto”—one of the defining characteristics of Bon Iver’s music that has impacted countless musicians since he emerged from his cabin in the woods. Perry’s message here: be open to those improbable mentors and happy tangents, but ultimately, trust yourself.

4. David Berman of the bands Silver Jews and Purple Mountains knows that home is people. In his song, “Snow is Falling in Manhattan,” Berman sings about building little rooms in time with his songs:

   Songs build little rooms in time
   And housed within the song’s design
   Is the ghost the host has left behind
   To greet and sweep the guest inside
   Stoke the fire and sing his lines

   Prior to this verse, he describes an old friend the homeowner has welcomed in to provide shelter from the growing blizzard. And by song’s end, Berman comes right out and clarifies that you, the listener, are the guest he’s welcomed inside. I like the idea that songs are rooms—metaphorical spaces that the songwriter welcomes us into—where we can abide for awhile as honored guests, in the cozy care of a thoughtful host.

5. You’re a magic station—ideas come to you when you’re ready to receive them. In his post “Ghost writers in the sky,” Mason Currey writes about how David Lynch would think of ideas as already existing in a separate room somewhere. Lynch says, “In the other room, the puzzle is all together. But they keep flipping in just one idea at a time.” In similar fashion, Austin Kleon writes about Nick Cave’s advice for a blocked songwriter. According to Cave:

   You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in.

   The best you can do is be ready to welcome in those ideas when they come a’knocking.

Thank you all for reading! I hope you found some inspiration for today’s moments, whatever they might be. If you enjoyed reading, go ahead and click subscribe to receive future newsletters.

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Be well and I hope to see you down the road sometime soon!

Eric

Christmas out of the room