As I write this, I am looking out my window at a brilliantly sunny day in January, which also happens to be minus 25 degrees Celsius. No one is out there because it’s just too cold. In our old house the frozen moisture on the inside of the windows used to make the most beautiful crystal shapes. I think of this song very much as 'the painting' I sing about in the lyric. It looks sunny at first glance, but then as you keep looking, the cracks in the narrative begin to form. More fun with my old trumpet (with its perpetually-sticking second valve). The headphone listeners out there may notice that it comes up in one ear, then into both, and then ends up in your other ear; something about its brassy sound that makes me equate a trumpet with the brilliance of the sun. It seemed like a good idea to have it move across the sky during the course of the day.
Lyrics
The bedroom floor begins his day like a barefoot walk on ice / A cruel trick on a mind still fast in the jaws of slumber’s vise / He draws the drapes to let the sun loose on the room / A perfect January day, a perfect January day / The kettle screams to break his trance like a siren in the night / A cup of tea to fortify the mind for come what might / And through the glass beyond the diamonds in the panes / A perfect January day, a perfect January day / A band of endless blue across a sun-swept frozen land, like a painting to the eye / A wash of brilliant light without a single sign of life / Like a smile behind a lie / The curtains of a darkened heart in time will draw aside / The ray of light that leads you back will have nowhere left to hide / And through the door he’ll step to start his life again / A perfect January day, a perfect January day