The 11th matt pond PA full-length, Winter Lives, features artwork that evokes Windham Hill’s catalog. Winter Lives arrives 11 years after Pond’s nearly all covers EP, Winter Songs. Pond, a New Hampshire native, understands the season that inspired Winter Lives, but he needed to write winter songs in the spring, so the album would arrive in context. Given his background, Pond didn’t scratch down too far to find inspiration. “It’s just visceral,” he says of winter. “There’s this coldness and shut-down emotional temperament to people in northern places, but when you get through that, there’s so much depth and reality to northern people.” Pond will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com over the next two winter weeks. Read our new feature on him.
Pond: The recent story in The New York Times was moving beyond belief. Not from grief, but respect and admiration. The way that Dr. Miller transcends his amputations, the value and meaning that they all give to the end of life—it is truly awe-inspiring.
Look, I know I may appear to be a little fixated on death right now. But I would like to make a case for the idea that it’s an important part of life. The way we die should be an affirmative extension of the way we live.
Life is great. But I don’t want to say it all the time. Bright colors bother me. My lower teeth are too crooked to properly smile. And lately, people are mostly interested in money and/or fame. Fame for their norm-core virtual presence, an effort to appear effortless, a means to end meaning.
So with the internet, I drift between dumb jokes and desperately wanting to understand mortality. Like that grand parade of all my failed barstool dates.
The meaning of life is meaning. The meaning of death is meaning. In between that is compassion, empathy—the desire to understand and create. Even if the creation is a flimsy grilled cheese sandwich you reluctantly share with your best friend—that’s all there is.
