A Chicago winter slain by The Beatles

How a song off of Revolver can thaw you out of winter.

If you prefer to listen, here is a link to the podcast version of this essay:

A Chicago winter slain by The Beatles

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A Chicago winter isn’t a known phenomenon because it’s cold or because it’s windy. It’s because a Chicago winter has true presence.

The winter of 2016 was my first Chicago winter, my freshman year at DePaul University. I was living in a dorm then known as Clifton-Fullerton Hall, now Ozanam Hall. On occasion, I’d walk down the street to a Whole Foods to buy plantain chips, for some reason. My first time calling the shots at the grocery store and what do I pick? Plantain chips. Go figure.

It was a five-minute walk from the dorm to the Whole Foods, but your mileage may vary depending on the season. One particular jaunt in the negatives of winter felt twenty minutes long, and I’ve never forgotten it.

I took a shower and bundled myself up as usual: parka, gloves, a scarf wrapped around my face, and a beanie pulled over my head. Like everybody else in Chicago, I looked entirely anonymous. Only my eyes and the bridge of my nose were openly exposed to the air, peeking out from the slit between my scarf and my hat. I barrelled down my echoey dorm stairwell and headed out the door, squinting through the wind to retrieve my snack.

I walked into Whole Foods and realized my eyelashes were stuck together. In the time I’d hurried down the block, whatever moisture that remained in my eyelashes from my shower had frozen and thanks to the squinting, the lashes had frozen together. I squeezed them between my thumb and index finger and felt the crunch of tiny icicles.

Blinking the lashes apart I looked on dumbfounded. I didn’t know that was physically possible. That you could try to open your eyes and feel them almost sewn shut. The look of awe hung on my face for the entirety of my snack run. When I checked out, the cashier could see the chill in my bones. He shook his head and with this knowing look said…

“Why does anyone choose to live here?”

Anyone could say “It’s cold out there today” or “The wind is crazy,” but to make the first thing you say to a complete stranger, “Why are we even here?” That’s presence.

Presence that doesn’t just rattle your bones or sting your eyes; it bends the way you live your life. You stop exploring the city and start hunkering down in the establishments closest to the train stops. (Ideally, if you can find a seat, at Emerald City Coffee, directly under the Wilson stop). You stop caring what your hair looks like or what outfit you put together because it all comes out in the wash of parkas, hats, and scarves.

A true Chicago winter is unrelenting and it trudges on well into the spring. You and everyone else are at its mercy. So you grin and bear it, day after day, almost hypnotized by its seemingly endless march forward.

And then, in the middle of that infinite loop, it lets up one day. It’s a little warmer. Then, even warmer the next week, and before you know it the iron grip has suddenly released.

You awaken like a member of the undead. The world around you seems to be in color for the first time. The trees are blooming, the plowed piles of snow are melting, a whole new world is being revealed, or maybe you’re just gaining the peripheries you were robbed of for all those months, squinting through the slit between your scarf and your hat.

In a way, it’s disorienting. It takes a minute to defrost, to remember how to move your limbs far and wide. You’re alive again, and it’s about to be summer in Chicago and you remember why you chose to live there in the first place.

My first spring in Chicago, I took a class on The Beatles. I was laughing to myself the whole time I took it because I couldn’t believe I could take a class on The Beatles. We learned about the more granular details of their recording methods, and I found a new appreciation for many of their songs. One in particular, though, stands out. “I’m Only Sleeping” off of Revolver.

To me, this song feels like waking up out of that first Chicago winter. The verses feel like that zombified stumble out from under winter's thumb and the chorus feels like the relief of spring and the relishing of the summer to come. Lennon’s line “I’m only sleeping” feels like the perfect call out, reminding you that the seemingly endless grey spell of winter is in fact only temporary, and it’s time to wake up out of it.

I’ll often find songs that capture the feeling of a moment, but I don’t always find them in the moment itself. That happened with this one. I have a specific memory of walking from the Pritzker Pavillion, this Sydney-Opera-House-looking band shell, over this twisty, shiny, futuristic-looking metal-plated bridge.

From the bridge, you see out over Maggie Daley Park, a playground filled with kids running free for the first time in months, but beyond that, you get a great view of the lake. That day, the sun was punching holes through a dramatic shroud of clouds hanging over the choppy-watered expanse.

The light of silver linings hit my face along with the wind, now finally warm. I was on my way to a date and I looked down at the sunflower I had for her in my tote and just kind of soaked it in. That's right around the point that the song popped into my head.

I thought this was a fitting story considering spring has sprung here in Brooklyn. I’ve lived in LA for the last five years, so it was my first time in a while appreciating the change of season. I hope it was a good spring for you and that you enjoy the beginning of summer.