Winter Sextodecimo 

Consider this an open letter to year 2010 or at very least a note left on the fridge.

You think you can play me like that? Firing a volley over a disputed island without retort? That sound, Sir, is my leather dueling glove being pulled from my velvet pocket. That sting, is said glove against your face.

Merry Expletive Christmas.

Thus it was that my playlist was constructed not with an ounce of anger but with several grams of desperate resignation.

The songs of this equivocal sextodecimo are not of Christmas per se but of the season of winter whose door we have only recently passed through. What of this season and its red solstice lunar eclipse? It has had sadness, irony, incivility, laughter, ripping wind, tides and blizzards, and it is still only a few days old. A season with a colicky cry that reminds us we're stuck here together on this rock like Prospero's ship-wrecked exiles.

Here you have it. Download unto thee. Songs of awe, passion, irony, and odes to Sister Moon and Old Man Winter.

If you're using iTunes, open the ZIP file and drag the files into the iTunes window, then select File » Library » Import Playlist and choose the XML file that was part of the ZIP. That should create the playlist in its intended order.