New Day

The miracle of today isn't the new year. 2007 is just a number. But after a long, celebratory night of fireworks and bubbly, standing in the middle of a party-ravaged kitchen and watching dawn break over old gray buildings, the magic is in the melting of night into day, blackened darkness into a deep-blue/cold-blue/charcoal-and-ash-gray hinting at the nearing of a sun still below an unseen horizon.

"Look," I said to my exhausted companion, we two the last remnants left standing in the silent dusky room. I pointed to the window. "A new day."

To start off your new year, check out Norwegian/British singer/songwriter Kate Havnevik by going to www.myspace.com/katehavnevik and clicking (on the right sidebar) her song entitled "New Day." Listen to the whole 7:42 minutes of dark strings, atonal slides, techno beat, electronic austerity, and gorgeous lyrics, a landscape of sound you've never encountered before. Her music may be familiar to you if you watch "Grey's Anatomy" - they seem to use her music whenever the tension becomes too unbearable and the show hits emotional zero, most notably the finale of season 2 and the recent episode "From a Whisper to a Scream."