Vetur by John Grant

i have known serious winters for a lot of my life. Until I was 12 I lived in Michigan, and to be a child in Michigan in the 1970s was idyllic in many ways. It was hot in the summer, and my sister and I played outside all day long with kids from the neighbourhood, and then the autumn was magnificent with all the incredible trees and the changing colours of the leaves.

Winter in Michigan was for real. It started snowing in October and after it stuck it was there until March. When my family left Michigan for Colorado, my best buddy Scott warned me about the “world out there”. It was around this time that I was realising — and unfortunately with horror — that I was gay and that the American Dream was meant for other people, not for me.

Winters in Colorado, it turned out, were also no joke. In Colorado, I learned all about the strange, ugly creature that is the American class system, and the Southern Baptist Church and homophobia, and how someone once said, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.” I couldn’t know then how true that was.

Somewhere back in Michigan in the 1970s, shame became so deeply rooted in me that, for most of my life, I have had a heck of a time developing any sort of healthy and lasting self-love. As a direct result of this, depression has been

my constant companion. And somehow this still didn’t keep me from choosing to spend my winters in Iceland.

I’ve lived in Iceland for nearly a decade, though as a musician I have been on the road for much of that time. The pandemic and the mandatory furlough it imposed on the music industry, not to mention all other areas of life, and the attempted overthrow of the US government by white supremacists, gave me plenty to think about as I started making my new record in March last year. And it was good to be home, to have some sort of routine for once and get used to not living out of a suitcase. I could also concentrate on learning more about the language of my adopted country, one of my favourite pastimes. I learned, for example, that the word for bear cub, húnn, also means “door knob”. I learned that legsteinn (leg being uterus and steinn meaning stone) means gravestone, not uterus-stone. You never know when these things will come in handy. And believe me, they will.

So, as we moved into the summer months (summer begins in mid-April and ends about two weeks later), I was very deep into writing the lyrics, which I hadn’t yet written before starting to record. It was the most continuous amount of time I’d spent in Iceland since moving here, and because of all the grotesque events taking place in the US, I thought a lot about what it means to “be” from a particular place. I thought about Michigan and about Colorado: places that, from an island in the middle of the North Atlantic, feel far away but are inextricable from who I am. They tell you that you can never go home, but what they don’t tell you is that you can never truly leave home either. I have different feelings about this depending on the day. It’s complex.

I thought about what it means to be a part of something, what it means to not want to be a part of anything. I thought about coffee, personalities, personality disorders, positivity, trauma, national identity, collective national

identity, motivation, context, compassion, hatred, coffee, community and, of course, about that prophetic quote from a few paragraphs ago.

But still the seasons turned and the days grew shorter and shorter until they were no more than a few hours of dull grey. The sun would consider things, then sigh and give up. Eventually, the Icelandic winter got me as it does every year. The word depression gets thrown around so much these days that I think even straight men are learning to roll their eyes along with the rest of us. Supposedly, rolling one’s eyes is not masculine.

If you have experienced severe depression, there have probably been countless times in your life when you would have given anything to have the energy to even consider thinking about rolling your eyes. Maybe you feel ashamed that you haven’t made it further than you have in life. Like, all the way to the kitchen from the bedroom. I’ve lost that battle more than a few times in my life and especially over the last 12 months.

I remembered the many occasions that I have been told I did not have a positive attitude and that I should just “get over it”: something which makes me wonder if, alongside the depression, I might be developing homicidal tendencies. I tried for years to develop the thick skin I kept being told I should have, but those years of trying to destroy my sensitivity transformed me into something much less palatable it turned out. And, of course, there was the booze, the crack and other things. That was never going to help.

I certainly have learned a lot about depression over the past 30 years of therapy, but not as much as I often think I should have. One thing I know is that it is definitely worth it to keep showing up. Another is to cut yourself some slack and give yourself some credit for every little thing you get done. When you deal with severe depression, getting out of bed can mean having an extremely positive attitude. I’ve even thought to myself at times, “Damn brah, what’s with the nihilism this afternoon?” I guess my inner child went to Ridgemont High.

With the help of some close friends and collaborators, the album exists. Making a record is challenging for many reasons under normal circumstances but this time it was definitely a different ball of wax.

But here’s a final tip for you. You know what’s a good little thing to get done? A cup of coffee. Over the last year, I’ve found myself wondering what I would do if I didn’t have my morning coffee to look forward to. I wonder if a billion or two people can identify with that. Eventually, I found a café in Reykjavik where both the coffee and the staff were equally incredible. I soon realised I was going there as much for their company as for the delicious cup of joe. They truly were a bright spot during a challenging time and I thanked them by name in the sleeve notes.

Was that a weird thing to do? Wouldn’t care if it were. My beleaguered encephalon begs your pardon. It may just be the Icelandic winter speaking.

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