While waiting for my snow tires to be slapped on today, I’m posted up at a coffee shop where I heard a song that reminded me how much I like it. If you were here, you’d have seen me singing along all awkwardly quiet and discreet. So, here we are — our little mini post for Friday Faves.

And yeah… if you didn’t catch that little dig about the snow tires, we’re looking at snow for the next four days (at least according to my phone app’s lovely little pictures). Sorry, I can’t not mention a little tie-in to Wednesday’s weather-driven angsty post. And I’ll tack on a second side note to this current aside… thanks for chiming in with your own thoughts on the matter on Insta and FB. It’s nice to know you’re all out there feeling some similar energy.

Speaking of comments, I got a really cool one on last Friday’s post. It’s been floating around in the back of my head since then. The sharer noted that his favorite word had become Hiraeth and went on to describe it as having a loose translation meaning “a deep longing for home.” I thought that was really cool because it’s such a profound human feeling that we all experience to some extent or another. I know over the course of my life and travels, I’ve felt it pretty deeply. In some cases, it’s been literal. I missed home. Other times, I connected it to the loss of a human and the unconditional love they showed me (e.g., my grandpa). But more than not, it’s been a vaguely mysterious feeling because it’s not abundantly clear what the object of that deep longing is. It doesn’t even feel entirely of this world. I happen to believe that’s by design… that it’s God’s way of reminding us that we really miss the beauty and wholeness that comes from being connected to him. While I’m sure there are infinitely more impressive definitions of hiraeth out there in “real books”, I was actually impressed by Wikipedia’s definition, so I’ll share it here below.

Hiraeth is a Welsh concept of longing for home. 'Hiraeth' is a word which cannot be completely translated, meaning more than solely "missing something" or "missing home." It implies the meaning of missing a time, an era, or a person - including homesickness for what may not exist any longer. Wikipedia

Feel connected to the word yet? Regardless of how you might experience it or what you connect it to, hiraeth is a thing. It’s real. It’s powerful. Sometimes it’s painful; beautiful other times. I think it even drives humans to do crazy things like get married and have kids. Or crazier things still, self-medicate in all kinds of ways. It’s both surprising and not how much substance abuse there is in our world right now. We’re not always the healthiest copers. But, when we are, we get some pretty amazing art, music, dance and other cool self-expression that comes out of grappling with our longing for home. Music has always been something that has moved me. And so here I am with a Gregory Alan Isakov song called “Amsterdam”. I’ll plop the lyrics here below so that when you listen to it, you can follow along. The whole song is deliciously moody and hopeful, and it builds as it goes.

It’s really the last verse that gets me… especially looking back over a bunch of international travel. “Churches and trains / They all look the same to me now / They shoot you some place / While we ache to come home somehow.” You get in the metal tube, arrive at some other portal that looks curiously similar to the one you left, meet new people and experience a bunch of stuff, learn a lot, feel a lot, miss home or people… then you get tubed right back and are confronted with re-entry into the place/people you missed. It’s not always a smooth re-entry either, and you try your best to refit your slightly altered self into a a place and people who are also shifting. It’s a pretty and messy puzzle.

The other thing I love about this song is how the artist personifies the city of Amsterdam. Right off the bat, we find out that Amsterdam is a she. She’s lovely, slightly haunting, and beautiful … sometimes solid enough to hold her hand, and other times as ephemeral as the wind. There’s not a whole lot to the song… but what there is pretty damned cool. So there you go. Happy Friday faves. You got any songs that evoke hiareth for you? Share, yo!

Amsterdam, by Gregory Alan Isakov

All inside our Amsterdam she hides
Watery-eyed
That howling wind, she's waving hi
Her other hand's in mine

Oh silhouette
She's growing tall and fine
She's got my back
She'll follow me down every street
No matter what my crime

All inside our Amsterdam she flies
Hoarding the kites
That howling wind, she'll take everything
But she's easy on the eyes

Churches and trains
They all look the same to me now
They shoot you some place
While we ache to come home somehow

Blog image from video above, directed by Laura Goldhammer.