Symphony Fantastique
Ian and I watched "The Shining" on Netflix the other night. He'd never seen it, can you believe that? (He has read the book, however.) The book was inspired by a hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which I'm told is not a long drive from us. That hotel does this big Halloween whole weekend thing with a masquerade ball, and haunted hayrides, and ghost tours, and all sorts of "Shining" themed activities. It looks cool, and maybe some year (such as this one), we may check it out. (It also makes me want to watch the miniseries of the story which I'm told is closer to the novel, and which was filmed at that hotel in Colorado, which Kubrick's film was not.)
What makes me think of this, however, is the opening credits of the movie that show the long, winding mountain road up to the hotel while "Symphony Fantastique" plays... at least, I think that's the music. I'm gonna go out on a limb and not check this information on Google, and just continue writing merrily along. I'm not sure if the same music is repeated at the end of the movie, or if I just imagine it. Hearing the music makes me think (not of "Sleeping With the Enemy," which is a movie I actually really enjoy), but of the end scenes of "The Shining" where Olive Oyl and the REDRUM kid escape in the "snowcat" tractor thingee.
I have heard it observed that one thing that makes this story, book or movie, so compelling is that there is something to scare you at every stage of your life in which you take in the story. For reasons completely incomprehensible to me, my parents took me to see that movie in the theatre when I was 9 years-old. It didn't scare me much then, though. I recall that then I was scared by some of the visual images, particularly the elevator doors opening to allow a massive flood of blood to fill up the hallway! Creeped me way out as a kid. Now I watch the same scene and can only think how really annoying to film and cleanup that scene must have been for the techs working on it! What scares me now is my sense of identification with the Olive Oyl character, trapped with the crazy husband, worried for her child. When I watched the movie again for the millionth time the other night, the scene that scared me the most this time was at the very end. Olive Oyl is trying to escape with REDRUM in tow, and she's wearing only her flimsy PJs and shortie bathrobe. I think about what happens to the characters after the camera stops rolling, with her white-knuckled and probably hysterical, escaping down the mountain with her son, and worrying if they're going to freeze to death on top of being haunted and chased by an axe-wielding maniac of a husband gone mad. That image just really sticks in my mind, and scares me in a lingering way that good horror really should. I enjoy that movie.
But anyway, where all this is going is that I now associate the scene of lonely mountain roads with a fresh covering of snow with "Symphony Fantastique."
Yesterday, we had unexpected snowfall -- "unexpected" only because I check weather.com for the temperature regularly, but I haven't yet found a good source for information about snow accumulation. It snowed all afternoon, big, fat, fluffy flakes that began to accumulate immediately. Then it died down late afternoon, and we figured it was over. We drove to Golden, what is normally about a 30 minute drive for me at the speed limits, to play Pathfinder with our NERO chums. When we pulled up, I put up windshield wipers in case we got any more snow, or ice -- This is a leftover New England habit. I recall from living in Massachusetts, that anticipated snowfall meant that every car in the parking lot would have it's windshield wipers standing up. I seem to be the only person in the state of Colorado who has ever heard of doing this; I often feel like everyone else is looking at me funny for it! I can understand why they would, too. In Massachusetts, snow meant ice, and that meant actively scraping the windshield. You don't want your windshield wipers to get iced over; it's a bitch. We get big fat fluffy drifts of movie snow here -- Ian tells me that's one of the reasons skiing is so popular in Colorado, as well as having lots of handy downhill slopes. I know nothing about skiing, but he tells me that the big fat fluffy snow is best for the sport. But anyway, there I was, windshield wipers in the air like I just don't care, parked in front of the friends' house. That was about 6:00 pm.
We watched it snow fairly steadily throughout the night, but I didn't think too much about accumulation. It was hard to gauge it just looking at the trees and already snow-covered ground in the backyard. Boy, did we have a surprise waiting for us when we went out to the car that night! I'd say about 6" of snow had fallen, and the cars were completely frosted! I was glad both about that windshield wiper trick, and that I recently upgraded my snow removal accoutrement to include a long-handled brush. I've always kept a hand-held ice scraper in the car -- Like I said, in New England, you get ice on the windshield. We rarely get anything more than a very light coating of easily-removed thin ice here. What we do get are giant piles of fluffy light snow which need to be brushed or swept off the car. Little ice scraper was not cutting the mustard there!
It was sort of fun, actually. I cleared a path to get in the car, and turned on the heat and defroster to get the car warmed up. Poor Ian with no mittens was a trooper, and although I urged him to stay in the car where it was warm while I cleared the outside, he did most of the work clearing the front windshield. Two other carloads of our friends were out there with us, and we tag-teamed clearing each others' cars as one group would finish. Then my friends' next-door neighbors also had two carloads of friends departing at the same time, so we chatted with them and checked to make sure they didn't need help getting clear. It was friendly and kinda fun, like snow is when you're a little kid... only with cars.
It was something of a white-knuckled drive on the way home -- hence what reminded me of "Symphony Fantastique" more than anything. Our two usual routes home are bad in the snow, so I relied on my new Christmas gift of a GPS to get us to the best route I know for bad weather travel. We kept the 4-Runner in 4WD, and never went faster than 30 mph, if even that fast much at all. It was an odd kind of snow driving that I hadn't yet experienced for more than a few residential blocks on occasion. I'm used to driving on icy roads, or roads covered with slush, or roads that look okay but might have the chance of black ice. This was actual outright layered snow. The ploughs were out, but hadn't gotten everything yet -- and more snow was falling quickly, filling up the formerly ploughed roads. There was little traffic to tramp down or clear the snow. Fortunately with 4WD and new tires last fall, we didn't slip a single bit on the way home, and all was well. It was, however, a bit of a nervous ride wondering if our luck would hold out.
But it is gorgeous here! Everything you picture in your mind about incredible alpine vistas from snow-draped purple mountains' majesty, trees that look like they're right out of Christmas cards all snowy and white, rosy-cheeked smiling people with their silly knit hats with pompoms, little kids out building mutant tiny snowmen -- that's what it's really like here. Snow here isn't what I remember from living in Massachusetts, where it seemed to get coated with soot relatively easily and pile up and stay there like so much rubbish. I think that's because our weather is so up and down that it melts quickly here before it can get dirty. This place is incredible. I know I never shut up about it, and frankly I hope I never do -- but I really love living here. Ian and I have just really found a great place to call home here in Colorado.
What makes me think of this, however, is the opening credits of the movie that show the long, winding mountain road up to the hotel while "Symphony Fantastique" plays... at least, I think that's the music. I'm gonna go out on a limb and not check this information on Google, and just continue writing merrily along. I'm not sure if the same music is repeated at the end of the movie, or if I just imagine it. Hearing the music makes me think (not of "Sleeping With the Enemy," which is a movie I actually really enjoy), but of the end scenes of "The Shining" where Olive Oyl and the REDRUM kid escape in the "snowcat" tractor thingee.
I have heard it observed that one thing that makes this story, book or movie, so compelling is that there is something to scare you at every stage of your life in which you take in the story. For reasons completely incomprehensible to me, my parents took me to see that movie in the theatre when I was 9 years-old. It didn't scare me much then, though. I recall that then I was scared by some of the visual images, particularly the elevator doors opening to allow a massive flood of blood to fill up the hallway! Creeped me way out as a kid. Now I watch the same scene and can only think how really annoying to film and cleanup that scene must have been for the techs working on it! What scares me now is my sense of identification with the Olive Oyl character, trapped with the crazy husband, worried for her child. When I watched the movie again for the millionth time the other night, the scene that scared me the most this time was at the very end. Olive Oyl is trying to escape with REDRUM in tow, and she's wearing only her flimsy PJs and shortie bathrobe. I think about what happens to the characters after the camera stops rolling, with her white-knuckled and probably hysterical, escaping down the mountain with her son, and worrying if they're going to freeze to death on top of being haunted and chased by an axe-wielding maniac of a husband gone mad. That image just really sticks in my mind, and scares me in a lingering way that good horror really should. I enjoy that movie.
But anyway, where all this is going is that I now associate the scene of lonely mountain roads with a fresh covering of snow with "Symphony Fantastique."
Yesterday, we had unexpected snowfall -- "unexpected" only because I check weather.com for the temperature regularly, but I haven't yet found a good source for information about snow accumulation. It snowed all afternoon, big, fat, fluffy flakes that began to accumulate immediately. Then it died down late afternoon, and we figured it was over. We drove to Golden, what is normally about a 30 minute drive for me at the speed limits, to play Pathfinder with our NERO chums. When we pulled up, I put up windshield wipers in case we got any more snow, or ice -- This is a leftover New England habit. I recall from living in Massachusetts, that anticipated snowfall meant that every car in the parking lot would have it's windshield wipers standing up. I seem to be the only person in the state of Colorado who has ever heard of doing this; I often feel like everyone else is looking at me funny for it! I can understand why they would, too. In Massachusetts, snow meant ice, and that meant actively scraping the windshield. You don't want your windshield wipers to get iced over; it's a bitch. We get big fat fluffy drifts of movie snow here -- Ian tells me that's one of the reasons skiing is so popular in Colorado, as well as having lots of handy downhill slopes. I know nothing about skiing, but he tells me that the big fat fluffy snow is best for the sport. But anyway, there I was, windshield wipers in the air like I just don't care, parked in front of the friends' house. That was about 6:00 pm.
We watched it snow fairly steadily throughout the night, but I didn't think too much about accumulation. It was hard to gauge it just looking at the trees and already snow-covered ground in the backyard. Boy, did we have a surprise waiting for us when we went out to the car that night! I'd say about 6" of snow had fallen, and the cars were completely frosted! I was glad both about that windshield wiper trick, and that I recently upgraded my snow removal accoutrement to include a long-handled brush. I've always kept a hand-held ice scraper in the car -- Like I said, in New England, you get ice on the windshield. We rarely get anything more than a very light coating of easily-removed thin ice here. What we do get are giant piles of fluffy light snow which need to be brushed or swept off the car. Little ice scraper was not cutting the mustard there!
It was sort of fun, actually. I cleared a path to get in the car, and turned on the heat and defroster to get the car warmed up. Poor Ian with no mittens was a trooper, and although I urged him to stay in the car where it was warm while I cleared the outside, he did most of the work clearing the front windshield. Two other carloads of our friends were out there with us, and we tag-teamed clearing each others' cars as one group would finish. Then my friends' next-door neighbors also had two carloads of friends departing at the same time, so we chatted with them and checked to make sure they didn't need help getting clear. It was friendly and kinda fun, like snow is when you're a little kid... only with cars.
It was something of a white-knuckled drive on the way home -- hence what reminded me of "Symphony Fantastique" more than anything. Our two usual routes home are bad in the snow, so I relied on my new Christmas gift of a GPS to get us to the best route I know for bad weather travel. We kept the 4-Runner in 4WD, and never went faster than 30 mph, if even that fast much at all. It was an odd kind of snow driving that I hadn't yet experienced for more than a few residential blocks on occasion. I'm used to driving on icy roads, or roads covered with slush, or roads that look okay but might have the chance of black ice. This was actual outright layered snow. The ploughs were out, but hadn't gotten everything yet -- and more snow was falling quickly, filling up the formerly ploughed roads. There was little traffic to tramp down or clear the snow. Fortunately with 4WD and new tires last fall, we didn't slip a single bit on the way home, and all was well. It was, however, a bit of a nervous ride wondering if our luck would hold out.
But it is gorgeous here! Everything you picture in your mind about incredible alpine vistas from snow-draped purple mountains' majesty, trees that look like they're right out of Christmas cards all snowy and white, rosy-cheeked smiling people with their silly knit hats with pompoms, little kids out building mutant tiny snowmen -- that's what it's really like here. Snow here isn't what I remember from living in Massachusetts, where it seemed to get coated with soot relatively easily and pile up and stay there like so much rubbish. I think that's because our weather is so up and down that it melts quickly here before it can get dirty. This place is incredible. I know I never shut up about it, and frankly I hope I never do -- but I really love living here. Ian and I have just really found a great place to call home here in Colorado.