Warming Winter

There’s a theory that much of what passes for Canadian artistic exceptionalism can be credited to Winter.

Yeah, the season’s a nice change when it starts. You want a white Christmas and a crisp, fresh day to start the New Year. But after that…

It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s messy. Sometimes even accomplishing the smallest errands or tasks can take forever. The Canadian Winter becomes an endurance test and experiment in isolation that forces you to hunker down and do the work – because there is no escape.

And for me, that January “We’re not even half way done” feeling hits about now. We’ve felt the lash of the first real cold snap and our options seem to narrow to Havana or hermit.

The trapped feeling usually peaks on a Monday morning like this with me staring out my window and realizing I cannot will the weather away. Time to zip into the cocoon of creativity for the duration.

Yet, those creative fires need to be stoked and what better way than with some warming music.

Harry Manx is a Toronto Blues man most of the world has never experienced. And that’s odd because he travelled the world searching for a way to match the music he loved with the music he felt inside.

He found it in India in the form of a 20 stringed instrument called the Mohan Veena which sparked an inspired musical journey, transforming not only his love of the Blues but his flat top guitar and banjo into East/West and frigid/balmy bridges.

If you’ve never heard Harry Manx, you’re in for a treat. Lay out your creative tools for the day and prepare to be swept away by a muse that will inspire and enrich your efforts.

No matter the temperature, you’re about to feel a whole lot warmer.