Kate Bush | Snowflake

I first heard a version of this song sampled and distorted by Father, or 아버지 as he writes it. It made my skin crawl and I was genuinely spooked, but the whole album, White Death (흰색 죽음), was unfortunately very triggering for me at the time. I'd discovered the deathdream genre for the first time in mid-2020, and it wasn't the best idea because of my declining mental health. I ended up writing an entire chapter of my debut fantasy book, that's based on my life, while listening to the first track of White Death. I wanted to capture the raw feeling of the stygian darkness. The absolute void the song portrays.

I've listened to Father's album off and on since because despite how terrifying it is, it's a beautiful and atmospheric piece of work. I've not heard anything like it. The internet seems to think so too because he's pretty well-known in the deathdream genre.

He finally made a video for his version of Kate Bush's Snowflake, and it's simple and portrays exactly what his version of the song entails, which is wasting away in the snow as a person experiences the beginning throes of death while still awake. The last few minutes of life as one drifts off. I listened to it again and was able to get through it.

I remembered people mentioning what the song was from, so I finally sought out Kate Bush's original version, and I discovered something awe-inspiring. The original song is still spooky to me because Father's version forever painted a bleak and haunting — even threatening — picture of it, but I looked up the actual meaning and tried to listen to it with Kate's intentions in mind.

It's definitely beautiful, but out of context, if you look deeper into it than it is (it's really just about a lonely snowflake that's very fragile, and a person seeking it out), it can seem very haunting. I tend to feel things very deeply, and my hyper-creative mind runs away with itself on things like this.

I also believe it has a lot to do with how I view winter and the snow, and the part winter plays in my life, internally and emotionally.

I once had a sleep paralysis dream when I was partially bedridden and sick. I wandered to my apartment's window, although everything was slightly off and nothing was right outside as these dreams tend to be. I may have had a few false awakenings with it.

On the window was a note, and it said something to the effect of, 'it's out there in the snow.' 'It's out there in the cold.'

That dream and the note have haunted me ever since. I thought of a strange and eerie explanation for its meaning:

"What if I’m seeing things that resemble spirits of the dead because I wasn’t supposed to survive? And this is the afterlife and I died in the snow while frozen to death, and my body is still out there. Or I feel cold and this is a flash in the midst of a death rattle and this whole life is just an in-between – an alternate reality until I either am revived or accept I am dead and move on. And then poof, this existence disappears."

I didn't put any more thought into that theory because it really doesn't feel good to think about, and even if it were the case, what can be done about it? (There are so many theories about our existence being a thought or some kind of afterlife, or a dream. It's all strange.)

Either way, Kate Bush's Snowflake makes me feel many things, as does the song Misty on the same album. I'm glad I discovered it, even if it does play out in my head opposite to the genuinely peaceful and happy meaning it was supposed to have.

©2021 Shane Blackheart