Like I See You
There is a cyclical nature. This has, more than likely, always been the case. But this is something I am noticing a lot more now. And if not noticing, maybe it is just resonating a lot more. There is a poignancy. Somewhere between coincidence and serendipity. The threads that connect. The way that ideas, or themes, recur and fall into place. And if you will allow me the courtesy, I would like to break the fourth wall, already, and address you directly. Because what I have found, and I am truly fascinated with, is in the space between coincidence and serendipity, there is the cyclical way something will inform or inspire something else. The overlap. The things that I am often giving consideration to, and where and how I find reflections of those things elsewhere, and how it all, ultimately, ends up on the page.
“Do you see me,” Joe Goodkin asks in the chorus of “How I See You,” the opening track on Winedark Life. It is part of a larger question. There is, of course, something more he is getting at. But there is a cyclical nature. The way that themes and ideas will recur and fall into place. What I give consideration to, where I find reflections of it, and how it ends up here. In these words on this page. Lately, I have been preoccupied with the idea of perception. For weeks, now, actually. How others see us. How we wish to be seen. How we see ourselves. How there are misunderstandings within perception. What happens, then, in those misunderstandings.
How far you are willing to look—not at someone, but for someone, before it becomes much too large of a request, and you turn your gaze.
“Do you see me,” Goodkin asks, tenderly, pensively, in the chorus of “How I See You.” There’s a pause, then. One that punctuates and allows his voice to fall where it needs to within the melody. “Like I see you.” I think about the way we wish to be perceived. Seen. Understood. I think about the ways we perceive ourselves. And about how we see or we understand others. There is disconnection, then. Spaces that form between us, and others. Distance. The way we wish someone would acknowledge us, or see us, and the effort, or the lack thereof, they put in prior to turning their gaze.
Everything feels so fragile right now, you see. Precarious. This has, more than likely, always been the case. But this is something I am noticing a lot more now. And if not noticing, it is just resonating a lot more. The fragility in connection. A balance on the verge of tipping out of our favor.
Somewhere between coincidence and serendipity.
Do you see me?
*
I am often thinking about seasons. The way time passes, yes. The way weeks become months and the months turn into years. There is a cyclical nature. The way things return, and then flourish, in the spring and summer. The way they recede with a fury and splendor in the autumn, and then the silence and the inevitable desolation of the winter.
And maybe you are like me, in how you listen to music—and in how you listen, you give consideration. Because if you are like me, in how you listen, or experience, or give thought, you perhaps associate certain artists, or songs, or albums, with certain times of the year. With seasons.
And it is, sometimes, a consideration based on linear time. Sometimes it is simply an association. You first hear a song, or an album, during a specific time of year, and that becomes where it lives. Sometimes it is more about a feeling, though. Not just what an album, or the song, sounds like, but what it feels like. Does that make sense? Does it evoke the sensation of a specific time of year. Of environmental changes, yes. Of pasts we romanticize, certainly. Wistful perhaps. Bittersweet. Melancholic. A warmth or an invitation. Is there a loneliness that radiates. A kind of isolation. A chill.
This does not make me unique by any means, but in time, and in seasons, I am most compelled by autumn. The slow fade of summer’s kiss. The gradual arrival of a crispness. The way that leaves change color and then tumble to the ground in slow motion when a breeze catches them at just the right moment. I tell you all of that to tell you this. That this does not make me unique by any means. But I have more albums or songs, or artists, that I associate with autumn. But I tell you all of that to tell you this, as well. That there are albums, or songs, or artists, that I connect to winter. Songs that I first heard in winter, yes. But songs that feel like the season, also. Songs that are quiet. More inward in their penchant for melancholy, or somberness. Something that mirrors, and conjures the longer nights, and the way your breath hangs in the air as you exhale. Something that feels like the silence of the snow falling slowly.
Something that is evocative of the gray skies and barren trees. The promise of a kind of warmth and an assurance that has not yet arrived but you continue to peer over the horizon with growing impatience.
And I tell you all of that to tell you this. I guess. Because Joe Goodkin’s Winedark Life is a winter album.
I suppose the album plays its hand, then, because there is a wintry, or colder implication from the cover art. But it is, of course, both in how Winedark Life sounds and feels. Like some of Goodkin’s finest, or most resonant work since he began releasing material under his own name, it is a sparse affair w/r/t the instrumentation favored. Outside of his own guitar, he is accompanied, at times, by understated and punctuative backup vocals from Lindsay Anderson, slight percussive flourishes, a cavernous-sounding piano, and the smooth, reverberant tones of a marimba. And it is this sparsity, that both lends itself to the focus, then, on Goodkin’s lyricism, and the way he carefully constructs a narrative in his writing, and on the way these songs feel.
Because there is certainly a quiet, or solace, in the winter. In how you watch the snowflakes swirl and descend. In that stillness, then, there is perhaps a need for something dramatic or stirring to underscore it. But I guess what I am thinking about or trying to articulate, if you will allow it, are the gray mornings. The actual warmth and coloring of the sun obscured. The way the snow has shifted into piles at the ends of driveways and on sidewalks. Dirty, melted, re-frozen. Not the ugliness of winter, but the reality of it. If that makes sense. The reality of our lives as reflected in this season.
Because there is a bounce, or a rollick—playful, even, at times, in some of how Winedark Life sounds, and feels. A morning walk with a dog. The rhythm of your life, as the day is revealing itself. The banality I suppose. The quiet of the first sips of coffee. Readying yourself. Unloading the dishwasher and packing a lunch for your spouse and sending them off.
And there is an inward nature, too. Contemplative. Fragile. The rhythm of your life, at other times of the day. The light receding early. The onset of darkness. The seemingly endless nights and the thoughts we are left alone with in a different kind of quiet. Because for as much warmth can be found in the bounce and rollick, or the playful nature in portions of Winedark Life, in those contemplative, fragile moments, there is a stark chill where the songs turn from a kind of compliment to the day, to offering unflattering or humble reflections.
I think about the length of winter. And how early on in the season our good nature wanes. And what that does to us. I think about the phrase “faded from the winter,” and the first time I would have heard that. I think about the toll the season, and this life, takes on all of us.
*
Winedark Life is a winter album, also, because two of its songs specifically take place during the winter—at the tail end of the year. The album’s opening track, “How I See You,” as well as its third, and the first single released in advance of the album, “Before It’s Christmas Again,” find Goodkin depicting scenes around the holidays—a time of year that I, at least, and maybe you do as well, have a number of misgivings about, or at the very least, struggle with. Though I understand that this is something that does not make me unique by any means. Regardless, it is a time of year when there are expectations, however great or small. Things asked of us. Moments of misunderstanding, and disconnection. The acknowledgment we wish to receive, and the effort or lack thereof someone might be willing to put in before they turn away and avert their gaze.
Do you see me?
Everything feels so fragile. Especially precarious at this time of year.
It is in these moments, though, that Goodkin creates a fascinating juxtaposition between the tone and the narrative he’s crafted. A little twangy, or loose in how it sounds, and a little jaunty, or playful, as mentioned, “Before It’s Christmas Again” is a song that works, and works extremely well, in the balance it creates, and treads, with the contrast in Goodkin’s writing. It isn’t a sad song—not really. There is sorrow, yes. Or a kind of melancholy. But it is not inherently downcast. It is human. Because the portrait he paints, through evocative phrasing and imagery, is that of that fragility. Or a grasping at something before a greater distance forms.
In how it is structured, “Before It’s Christmas Again” wastes no time—and really, a lot of the songs on Winedark Life are assembled this way. Saying, or conveying, what Goodkin wishes to, and never running the risk of overstaying a welcome. Opening with kind of freewheeling strums of the acoustic guitar, the song is punctuated, quickly, with the piano, adding soulful flourishes, as he’s joined by additional vocals from Lindsay Anderson for the chorus, and then a sleigh bell, clattering in the distance during the second verse.
What compels me, then, about the narrative of “Before,” is the vivid nature of it, yes, but also how quickly Goodkin shifts from the kind of sentiments and imagery from the opening lines, into something that speaks to the more fragile, or precarious reflections on connection, and distance, that recur in this collection.
“Standing at the station, I put my hands on your hips,” he begins. “New Year’s anticipation—I pull you in for a kiss.”
There is a kind of loneliness, I think, that ripples throughout the rest of the song. And a grasping towards something that feels just slightly out of reach. “We buy some good tequila,” Goodkin explains. “Go to the party and then, I wonder if I’ll get the chance to see you before it’s Christmas again.” And if not a loneliness, exactly, a kind of preemptive sorrow. I think about the inevitable goodbyes, and how difficult those can be, or feel, and how the understanding that your time in the company of someone does come to an end, and how that end—temporarily, certainly—regardless, it looms, and can effect your interactions.
I think, sometimes, about the barriers between ourselves, and others, w/r/t connection. And I guess I think about this, now, and the kind of loneliness depicted here, because there is an inward, somber turn, the further we’re taken within the narrative, as Goodkin details the aforementioned holiday gathering with a kind of distraction and detachment, and continues pushing the narrative forward with what becomes a literal, and figurative, hungover bleariness—the cold of another gray, winter morning, the hope or potential we cling to, and in contrast, the way the harshness of another day asks us to reflect on things perhaps unflattering, or difficult.
“A walk between the snow,” Goodkin continues, towards the end of the song, as he continues to paint this evocative portrait. “The streetlights cast a glow. Laughter comes and goes—the night unfolds.”
“The day starts with a new sun. I watch the light on your face,” he remarks, earnestly. “In my heart, I make a resolution to hold onto this moment, in this place.”
“We shake off our good tequila. I take you to the station and then I wonder if I’ll get the chance to see you before it’s Christmas again,” he sings, as the song winds down. And there is no resolution, then, really, in this instance. That is, I suppose, indicative of the human condition. There is the want, or the desire. The ways we wish to close the distance that feels like it is forming. The small, quiet moments we share with someone. The way we cling to those when everything feels uncertain and fragile.
*
I have been thinking about the title of this album. Specifically the word, or expression, “winedeark.” The way it sounds when you speak it. How it feels in your mouth before it leaves, and lifts away. What it is like to hear it sung within the titular track. But I have been thinking about what it conveys. Or implies. And I suppose as I often am, I am thinking about a darkness.
There is a space that exists within a narrative. A line that divides the personal, and a kind of fiction. Often that line is blurred. And I think we as listeners can both acknowledge and appreciate the instance when that line does blur, and a sense of ambiguity forms.
I am often thinking about darkness. An absence of light. Both literal, and figurative.
There is a surprising depiction of a kind of darkness to be found in certain moments throughout Winedark Life. A starkness, or an edge, to the way that a narrative unravels, or in the way a lyric hangs. A bleakness appearing as a character, just off-stage—something that lends itself to the dynamism in how Goodkin writes.
Goodkin’s dynamism is truly remarkable. This is not something about his work that I forget exactly, but it does strike me every time I sit down to listen to one of his records. Because he can be, and often has been unabashed in what he wishes to reveal. Not only about himself, but about others in his life—I am thinking of the material found within the cycle of three EPs released between 2015 and 2017, all of which were written around unflinchingly personal reflections and stories.
He is a storyteller, yes. Of his own stories, and the stories of others. But also of stories with inspiration sought elsewhere. In 2011, Goodkin recorded The Odyssey, a 35 minute cycle of songs that adapts, and retells, the Greek poem of the same name; a decade later, he released The Blues of Achilles, a similar adaption of The Iliad, where specific sentiments and themes are lifted from the source material as it unfolds through Goodkin’s adoption of different characters’ perspectives as he moves from song to song.
There is a space that exists within a narrative. A line that divides the personal, and a kind of fiction. Often that line is blurred and an ambiguity is formed. And I had asked Goodkin about this, as a means of maybe better informing how I listened, and how I gave consideration to Winedark Life. And he told me that even within the conceit of The Blues of Achilles being a first-person cycle of songs, and that it is perceived as storytelling, or a narrative structured, he feels like it is as personal, if not more so, than the revealing, autobiographical songwriting from this Record Of Life, Loss, and Love releases.
There is a space that exists within a narrative. The personal, and a kind of fiction. Goodkin attests that Winedark Life is somewhere between those extremes. The line that divides, then, blurring into ambiguity.
I am often thinking about darkness. The absence of light. Literal, yes. Also figurative.
The surprising starkness, or edge, or depiction of a kind of darkness on the album can be found within its titular track—there is an ominous tone in Goodkin’s guitar chord progression, but the real edge, or bleakness, comes from lyrics, and specifically how they are delivered, and how there is the uncertainty of where they come from—how personal, or revealing they may or may not be. “Live a winedark life,” he observes in the chorus, before singing the next line with a little bit of a sneer in how it lands. “Go home to your waiting wife. She will take you back—no question asked.”
“In her winedark eyes, see the things that she survived,” he continues, quietly. “While you were on the sea, tied to the mast.”
Goodkin returns to this starkness, or edge, and the darkness depicted within a kind of connection at risk of unraveling, on “Don’t Stay Don’t Go,” which, in terms of its arranging, is much less ominous, or brooding, and simply much more somber, and melancholic—that feeling both offset and magnified somehow by the subtle, glistening plunks of the marimba, which offers punctuation after the chorus, and into the rather harrowing imagery of the second verse.
A fragility, or uncertainty, set within domestic scenes, is something Goodkin has written of in the past—specifically, I am thinking about how those were detailed in his 2023 release, Consolations and Desolations. Throughout Winedark Life though, and certainly on “Don’t Stay Don’t Go,” the fragile nature, as written, feels heightened, comparatively, as he crafts an evocative, unnerving, and albeit fragmented portrait.
“I took a breath when you touched my leg,” he recalls, hesitantly. “Somehow we ended up here.”
“Hold me close, my future ghost,” Goodkin continues, in the song’s short chorus. “Don’t stay, don’t go.”
As it did, in a slightly less detrimental way, in “Before It’s Christmas Again,” alcohol plays a role in the narrative to “Don’t Stay.” “Bring alcohol from down the hall and I wait for you to show,” Goodkin explains, before the story, then, takes its starkest, and most surprising turn. “You call me ‘doll,’ I push you against the wall. No one can ever know.”
In these moments as they are portrayed, and within the narratives Goodkin has built, there is often no resolve. A last thought, and then we are brought along just far enough before the moment doesn’t end, necessarily, but our glimpse into it is over. You wonder what happens next, then, in a world that might exist outside of the perimeters of the song.
There is a tension still in the final verse of “Don’t Stay.” “Kiss my neck before you fly,” Goodkin asks. “Don’t leave a bruise—you can be my muse if I can be a well in which you cry.” And there is a tension, then, in the fragility. The uncertainty. There is a lot of gravity in the phrase “my future ghost.” The precariousness and misunderstandings. The distance that forms. What it takes to cross from one end, to the other.
I think a lot about the absence of light. Literal, yes. Also figurative.
*
And this is, I think, less about a cyclical nature. And more about the space between coincidence and serendipity. How ideas, or themes, recur and then fall into place. The overlap. What we give consideration to, and how we give consideration to it.
Winter, and an absence of light, of course play large roles in the nine songs found on Winedark Life. But there is other imagery, or ideas, that Goodkin returns to. Travel—a momentum, or kind of entropy, being one of them that underlies. The sea, also. A different kind of darkness or isolation. A vastness that surrounds.
Goodkin elaborated to me on his writing process. “When I'm working on a group of songs I expect or hope will become an album, I try to write for as long as possible without concrete intention,” he said. “I’m just trying to get songs out that make me feel something even if I'm not sure what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling it. Actually, even better if I don’t know why or what I'm feeling. Something like mining my subconscious for whatever is floating around in there.”
"At some point in the process I begin to see recurring ideas and images. Oftentimes they surprise me, which I think is good,” he continued. “Once I'm aware of them, I might try to write more about those ideas and themes. So I think of it as organically writing myself into an album concept, and then having to write my way out of it with more intention.”
Winedark Life is bookended with what I would contend are its most poignant or resonant songs—the album’s penultimate track, “Undertow,” is also amongst its most affecting. Dramatic, and stirring in how its instrumentation reveals itself with intentionality, and remarkably thoughtful, and cautious, in how Goodkin continues to explore the notions of being understood, and the ways in which fragility and distance intersect.
There is meticulous nature to the sparsity and the rhythm of “Undertow,” with Goodkin using casual yet precise method of plucking the strings of his guitar to create this progression that is powerful—and in that power, the song walks this line between being borderline triumphant sounding, or hopeful at times, while also being somber, and contemplative, which is a truly fascinating juxtaposition to witness.
In it, he weaves these understated bass note plunks that surge just below the surface, punctuative, shimmering electric guitar strums that arrive after the song’s halfway mark, and then throughout, this mournful, reverberant atmospheric sound—the feeling of something somberly blowing in the breeze that, even in its just two minutes and change, the layers become soothing and hypnotic.
Lyrically, “Undertow” comes from a kind of exhaustive resignation—not an understanding, exactly, but an acknowledgement of the precarious balance we are trying to maintain, in terms of connection. This darkness. This distance seemingly continues to grow.
“Your undertow—it pulls me down as I go,” Goodkin observes, his words falling gently, and slowly, into the bed of guitar string plucks underneath him. “It pulls me out to sea—you think it pulls you back to me.”
“Feels like years I’ve been alone, floating in the blue,” he continues, before adding, “I swim parallel to you.”
Goodkin’s voice, at least in the first part of the song, is a little restrained, operating from someplace quiet, and sorrowful. In the bridge, it lifts—delicately, and in doing so, I think works to create a contrast to the otherwise heavy tone. The moment is stirring, yes, in how the instruments begin to slowly work back and forth in a mesmerizing sensation, and in the ascension of his voice, but the writing still comes from a source of pensive melancholy. “The more I fight, the less I win,” he confesses. “The more I try, the less I have to show.”
“For your undertow, it’s more than you’ll ever know,” Goodkin sings at the end, his voice gradually returning to that place of restraint, as he utters the vivid and haunting final line. “You think it pulls you back to me. Maybe someday you’ll see.”
“Undertow” is, again, the portrayal of a moment, and in these narratives, there is no resolve. A last thought, and here, we are left in the long shadow of uncertainty, or unease, and in that, some discomfort of the unknown that could happen next, in the world that exists outside of the song.
I am always thinking about a kind of darkness. The literal and figurative absence of light. And the distances that form. The way we are perceived. The misunderstandings. The fragile, precarious nature of the human condition. The discomfort and unease, and uncertainty, we find ourselves in and how we might, even in the long shadow it casts on this song, see our reflection in it.
*
And there is this cyclical nature. A connectedness. It’s more than l likely always been this way. This is just something I am noticing a lot more now and if not simply noticing then perhaps I am in a place where it is just resonating more. Poignancy. The space between coincidence and serendipity. These threads that connect.
Ideas and themes, recurring, then falling into place.
Joe Goodkin, in elaborating on his songwriting process, told me that he, at first, writes without intention, as a means of getting ideas out that make him feel something, even if he is uncertain at first what, or why, he is feeling that. Eventually, he notices the elements that recur.
“I think of it as organically writing myself into an album concept and then having to write my way out of it with more intention,” he told me.
I am always writing myself into these. Looking for the way in. In the end, it is both about me and is not. It is about the album, and the artist, yes. But also my experience with the album. Which songs from it compelled me. And why. And where are the places where I see myself in the songs.
There is this cyclical nature. The elements recurring. Something will inform something which will inform something else. You write what you know. This is what I know. “Do you see me,” Goodkin sings, tenderly, in the chorus to the opening track on Winedark Life, “How I See You.”
One of the album’s finest moments, without a doubt, his asking of that is part of a larger question. There is something more he is getting at. You write what you know and right now what I know is that, recently, I have been preoccupied with the idea of perception. How others see us. How we wish to be seen. How we may see ourselves. Where there are misunderstandings, and what happens, then, in those moments.
I have been thinking about how far you are willing to look for someone. Not at someone. But really look for them and understand them, before it becomes too big an ask and you turn your gaze.
I often associate music—songs, an album, an artist, whatever—with certain times of the year. With seasons. It is sometimes based on linear time. When you first hear a song, or an album. A lot of the time, though, it is about the feeling. Not what a song or album sounds like but what it feels like. Does it evoke the sensation of a specific time of year?
Winedark Life is inherently a winter album, playing its hand really, because there are the wintery, colder implications from the cover art. It was recorded, also, during the winter—nearly a calendar year prior to my sitting here, today, collecting my thoughts on it, over the span of three days in January, 2025, with Goodkin teaming again with the esteemed producer Brian Deck, whom he collaborated with on his self-titled EP.
Winedark Life is inherently a winter album because of how it sounds and feels. It is a sparse affair; outside of Goodkin’s guitar, there is little additional accompaniment, which creates an environment that is, I think by intention, a little lonely. A little isolating. Chilly. There is, of course, a line, I think, with winter. Or a threshold. There is a quiet and solace in how you can watch snowflakes swirl and descend. These moments pass, though. The line crossed. Gray mornings—the actual warmth and coloring of the sun obscured completely. The reality of the season when the snow shifts into piles at the ends of driveways and on sidewalks. Dirty and melted and then re-frozen. The reality of our lives reflected in the season.
There is a bounce, and a rollick, at times—a playfulness, even, in some of the songs on the album. How they sound. And I suppose more importantly, how they feel. Representative of a space between the endless gray skies, ice and dirty snow, below zero temperatures, and the stillness that accompanies a snowfall, or the way your breath hangs for what seems like forever in the evening air. The minutiae of a winter morning. A dog walk and the morning sun’s arrival, doing its best. The first sip of coffee and a bleary gaze from the kitchen window, across the backyard. The lunch bag you hand to your spouse as they head out the door for work. The rhythm of our lives.
“How I See You,” the album’s vivid, crystalline opening track, is one of those moments.
There is a slight bounce to it, in the way Goodkin pulls at the guitar strings, crafting something that feels effortless in how folksy and meditative it is—and within this, and in how it complements the lyrics, there is this kind of optimism that ripples, even in the tentative vignettes it portrays.
Every New Year’s Eve, my best friend takes time to set her intentions for the year—she calls it “hopes and dreams.” And in giving consideration to the coming calendar year, and the potential, or the promise, that it offers one, this time of intention provides her an opportunity to revisit what she had written out as her hopes and dreams on New Year’s Eves in the past. This act, or tradition, within her home is a moment to understand or acknowledge where she is now, yes, but it also gives this glimmer into versions of herself—what she perhaps had wished for, or intentions set any number of years prior.
It gives the chance to reflect on how many of those she may have achieved, and to reflect on how much distance has formed, and will certainly continue to form, between the person she was, who she is now, and how she might change in the coming year.
For as earnest, and as thoughtful an individual as I am, I have not put a lot of weight in the act of reflection and consideration of the potential of New Year’s Eve. “Do you think it’s cliche,” my best friend asked me. I told her I didn’t. And I don’t. If anything, I think it is incredibly admirable that she does this every year.
I think about the way I wish to be perceived. Or seen. Or understood. How we may perceive ourselves and the misunderstandings and the disconnections that form in the space between us and others. I am perhaps thought to be a contrarian. Or a curmudgeon. There is a truth in that, certainly. This I do not deny. But what I contend and what I have been thinking about lately, for weeks now, actually, is how I am so much more than that but in the ways I wish someone would acknowledge, or see me, there is of course the effort or the lack thereof before someone simply turns their gaze. No longer wishing to look for another person, and is only willing to look at them. Does this make sense. My hope is that it does, but I suppose we have come so far and we still have a ways to go and ultimately something I am no longer concerned with is if you understand or not. If you are unwilling to see the cyclical nature of things or the ways in which ideas or concepts recur or if you not only turn your gaze from looking for someone but if you in doing also turn your gaze from places where you see yourself reflected in the music you not only listen to but experience.
“Do you think it’s cliche,” she asked me and I told her I did not. I don’t believe that at all. There is a weariness I feel. All of the time yes. And my misgivings about the holidays do not make me a unique or special individual but in my weariness and my misgivings as one year comes to an end and another begins, what I do understand and acknowledge is that I have just not taken the time or put in the work required to divorce myself from the idea that it is just another day. One day ends. Another begins. I do not really give thought to the gravity of one year ending and another beginning. But I should. Because there is the potential. The hopes and the dreams and the intentions to set and the consideration to give and the real thought to take with you.
I think, sometimes, about the things that we want to hold onto.
Everything feels so fragile right now. Precarious. This has, more than likely, always been the case. But it is something I am noticing a lot more now. And if not noticing this fragility in connection is something that is more resonant than before.
The balance on the verge of tipping out of our favor.
This kind of delicacy, and distance that forms, are things Goodkin returns to throughout Winedark Life—“How I See You” serves as the introduction, then, in exploring these themes, and this need to feel understood, all of which is presented in these fragments set against the backdrop of New Year’s Eve, and the morning after.
“It’s the last day of the year and it’s getting dark outside,” Goodkin sings, gently, his words falling into the folksy, reserved guitar string plucking just underneath. “That breaking sound you hear,” he continues. “Is the fear in each goodbye.”
“On the last day of the year, I try to pull some light inside,” he explains in the second verse. “I keep it in my tears—all the ones I couldn’t cry,” before returning to similar, though adjusted, phrasing in the final verse. “It’s the first day of the year, and it’s getting light outside. The breaking sound’s still here—in the fear my heart can’t hide.”
The ask comes in the song’s chorus, which as it first appears, is a single question. “Do you see me how I see you,” which Goodkin then adds to when it arrives again. “Do you need me how I need you.”
In how it unfolds, over three minutes and change, Goodkin gradually welcomes additional elements alongside his voice and guitar—the subtle, and softening back up vocals of Lindsay Anderson add a complimentary flourish to the weight within the sentiment of the chorus, with the clattering of a percussive element arriving midway through, as well as the distorted, loosely played notes of a solo, serving as a bridge of sorts before the final verse.
There’s a nervous kind of longing in “How I See You.” There is a need for connection, yes, and there is a want to be truly understood—and in that, there are the things that create barriers. That cause the disconnect or the misunderstandings. That make things feel tentative or fragile.
I think about my best friend, and the way she takes the time on New Year’s Eve to set her intentions for the coming year. Her hopes and dreams. And the way she reflects on the things she had given consideration to in the past. And something that is remarkable, in “How I See You,” is how Goodkin, in three relatively short, sparse verses, conveys so much. There is of course the ask, within the chorus. But in the imagery, in the final verse—“It’s the first day of the year, and it’s getting light outside. The breaking sound’s still here—in the fear my heart can’t hide,” there is this subtly referenced, but incredibly weighty feeling of sorrow. And the resignation when the sorrow is still there.
How we may not wish to carry something over, from one year to the next. But in the light of the morning, however bright, or gray, it might be, we understand that we have.
*
I am often thinking about darkness. An absence of light. Both literal, and figurative.
In how it sounds, and in how it carries itself across nine songs, Winedark Life is a winter album. Recorded in winter, and arriving a calendar year later, in another winter, Goodkin successfully, and sharply captures the extremes of the season—the chill that gets into your blood, or the cusp of merriment and joy during the holidays, and the trepidation that lingers. I am remiss to say that it is a dark record. There is the implication of an absence of light within the title yes, and there is a surprising depiction of a kind of darkness within specific moments. A bleakness, just appearing off-stage. It is never oppressive. Regardless, it is there. Always there.
I am often thinking about darkness. And about the idea of perception. I have been preoccupied with that for weeks now actually. How others see us and how we wish to be seen, and how there are so often misunderstandings, and in those misunderstandings, what happens.
There is a cyclical nature. A poignancy that is somewhere between coincidence and serendipity. This way that themes or ideas or whatever recur and then continue falling into place. The way all of this, then, will inform or inspire something else. We keep looking for glimpses of ourselves or what our experience is. It’s not nothing when you keep finding them, and you use it as a means of compulsion.
There is a darkness in Winedark Life. The complications of our connections with others. The human condition. “Do you see me like I see you,” Goodkin asks in the first song. How far are you willing to look. Not at someone. But for them. How far until it becomes too big of an ask and you turn your gaze.
It makes sense, then, I think, that the opening line to the final track on the album, “Sweet Oblivion,” is “Take me out of darkness—make me something else.”
There is a space that exists between hope and desperation.
In how it sounds—even as the first notes ring out from Goodkin’s warm acoustic guitar, there is a stirring nature to “Sweet Oblivion.” Not dramatic or theatrical, but aware enough in itself that, as the album’s closing, it needs to walk a line between specific emotional responses, which it does with ease.
And in arriving at the end of the album, more than anything, I feel like it serves as an afterward of sorts, just in terms of its lyricism, and the connection to the penultimate track, “Undertow,” which is a song that is less of an ask, and more of a exhausted resignation—an admittance of the darkness we exist in, and the misunderstandings and the distance it creates. In the moment, there is no resolution, and the sentiments are similar. The admittance of this darkness. The misunderstandings and the distance it creates. But where it differs, in a fleeting and reflective way, is that it continues the thought with a request. There is a darkness, but I hope you will look for me in it.
I hope you will find me.
Goodkin’s guitar here is stirring—ringing out in a progression that oscillates between an optimism, and a sadness, or sorrow. Again, working with minimal, if any, accompaniment, he is joined here by these gradual atmospheric flourishes—extended, mournful, and metallic reverberant pulls that are not eerie, exactly, but in the natural way they arrive and then recede, create this slight undercurrent of tension.
As there is in the question found in the center of “How I See You,” there is an ask, or a request. A plea. Within the opening line of “Sweet Oblivion.” “Take me out of darkness,” Goodkin begins, with hesitancy in his voice. “Make me something else. Tell me how I’m broken, so I can fix myself.”
There is a space that exists between hope, and desperation.
There is a darkness, and I will ask you to look for me in it.
The oscillation between the sadness, or sorrow, or fear, and the hope, and assurance, and optimism, is one that swings back and forth—a kind of emotional restlessness or uncertainty. “If you find my empty will you fill me up,” he asks midway through, an anxiety growing. “If I call your number, will you pick up?”
The assurance, or the sense of hope, comes in the alternating passages where the titular phrase is uttered. And the assurance comes in in this kind of all-encompassing declaration—“I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll hear you in the wind. I’ll sing you into being my sweet oblivion.” The declaration, then, turns into another ask, or plea, in the final verse.
“Come be my new heartbeat. Come be my new skin. Come be the air I breathe, and come, be my sweet oblivion.”
And we are brought, as we have been brought throughout Winedark Life, to a moment. Because in Goodkin’s portrayal within the narratives he has built, there is often no resolution. A last thought. The moment doesn’t end, necessarily, but our glimpse into it is over. You wonder, or at least, I wonder, what happens next, then, in the world that might exist outside of the perimeters of the song.
Everything feels so fragile now. Precarious. And this has more than likely always been the case. But it is just something I am noticing more now. If not noticing, it is just resonating so much more now than ever before. The fragile nature of our connections. The balance that seems like it is always on the verge of tipping out of our favor.
There is a cyclical nature. This, too, has more than likely always been the case. It is something that I am noticing more now. If not noticing, it is just resonating in ways I have not anticipated. There is a poignancy. Somewhere between coincidence and serendipity. These threads that connect. The things that recur and fall into place. An overlap. What I am giving consideration to, and why, how I find reflection of things elsewhere, and how it all inevitably ends up on the page.
I have been preoccupied with the idea of perception “Do you see me like I see you,” Goodkin asks within the chorus of “How I See You.” I am, of course, looking for glimpses of myself, and my own experience, within his songs. The way others see us. How we wish to be seen. How we see ourselves. Where the misunderstandings happen and the distance forms.
I am thinking about how far someone is willing to look for you before it becomes much too large an ask, and their gaze turns.
I am often thinking about darkness. An absence of light. Both literal, and figurative.
There is a darkness. And I will ask you to meet me there. I will ask you to look for me in it.
I am thinking about the space that exists between hope and desperation because, one of the things that I have been giving consideration to, for weeks now, is the idea of hope. Or promise. Or a potential. That there is something more on the other side of all of this. Sometimes it feels like that is all we really have. Sometimes the space that exists between hope and desperation feels like a distance impossible to bridge and sometimes it feels like a convergence and you and I are in the center of it because, you see, this is all we really have.
Joe Goodkin, in so many places on Winedark Life, brings us right up to a moment. There is the ask. He is, as we often are, asking things of another. A loved one. We are asking for an understanding. In his writing, there is not always a resolution. The moment as depicted ends and you wonder what happens next in the world that exists outside of the narrative.
There is no resolution as “Sweet Oblivion” ends. There is a need for assurance and a plea. The space between hope and desperation. There is this promise, or potential, that we are clinging to as a means of getting ourselves through. That there is something more on the other side. You make the ask of someone. How far someone is willing to look for you, and in the absence of light, they will look for you still.
