Winter Fields

Great song but I don't find it particularly warm and cozy. There is definitely a sense of wonderment but it is accompanied by some unsettling lyrics. The image of the rabbit along with the idea of diving down in one's dreams strikes me as an Alice reference ("going down the rabbit-hole"). The singer is frightened but compelled to step into these dreams "where the wild things roam." As with Wonderland, this constitutes stepping out of perceived reality into an alternate reality with different rules, some of which are dangerous. This is not to say that the song is about Alice in Wonderland; but it is an apt metaphor for the winter, a time of transformation (of the landscape), hazard (especially for animals like the "skidding rabbits") and perhaps depression (seasonal affective disorder, for instance, another possible reading of diving down). The perspective is not necessarily only human; the beginning of the song seems to be narrated from the perspective of rabbits ("let your sharp teeth show"), but there is some conflation with the human ("hands") that makes me think the singer is thinking about what it would be like to be a wild rabbit in the winter. The image of the car, the wire post (wire fence?), and the skidding rabbits that "make good paper ghosts" carries some suggestion of death, as cars and wire would be hazards (more difficult to avoid in ice), but paper ghosts could also be a craft that a child might make. Again, the intersection of childlike wonderment and death is unsettling. The detail of licking salt off the Sussex coast probably refers to the salt marshes, a major ecosystem of that region of England; it grounds the song, balancing its impressionistic lyrics with a sense of the specificity of memory that can sometimes infuse or inform memory. Since an adult would likely (but not necessarily) be more aware of the geography and the reason why rabbits might be going there, the song seems to be more of a memory of childhood--another use of the diving metaphor (i.e., into the past). "Rows of white" may refer to actual fields which may appear to have rows of white (separated by furrows) when snow has fallen lightly on them, but it also evokes graves which also may be arranged in rows with white markers (crosses or tombstones). The escape may be that of the rabbits, or the dreams of the children, or that of the memory of adults. Death is also a form of escape. The need for movement in the second verse definitely evokes the running and playing of children. I love "colours of absence flooding hill," an inverse of "absence of colours" which could also be used to describe the white of the snow but to lesser effect. The "flooding" is imitated by the child who "spills" into the field. This flooding and spilling could also be occurring through the medium of dreams (imagination) or memory. The transition to the inside of the house suggests the distance between the singer and the imaginative world of the child. The metronome marks the steady passing of time; its position recalls childhood fears of monsters under the stairs. Ironically, time is less a monster to children than it is to adults, who are more aware of their mortality. The diver suit is a bit obscure to me. Since it has been outgrown by the singer and (presumably) her siblings, it locates the singer's perspective in the present as an adult. It can't be ignored that it also links with the notion of diving in the chorus, even if only as a conduit for memory. Does it also link the song to "Deep Sea Diver," the last track on the album? I won't bother hazarding a guess. Anyway, the desire to "get to where the wild things roam" suggests the wish to enter the world of the child (a "wild thing" when running and spilling into the winter fields) but also of the rabbits, as understood through both the child's and adult's perspective (paper ghosts/animals going to the salt marshes). My guess would be that this also represents a desire for a more "natural" existence, perhaps one that is not marked by the passing of time and knowledge of mortality. (In this sense, the "rows of white" makes more sense, as both a looking into the past to the fields of childhood memory and of the rabbit and child's "natural" existence, as well as forward to the impending reality of death.) Diving into memory is then more of a fearful activity for the adult than are the imaginative dreams of children (although these two may be unsettling). The singer's conjuring of her mother in this context recalls the comfort that could be obtained from her mother as a child, but does it also suggest that this is no longer possible? Time may have created too much of a distance between the mother and child, either emotionally or in reality, as, depending on the amount of time elapsed, the mother may actually have passed away.