Not goosebumps.

Tell you what.

If you happen to spend New Year's, or any celebration worthy of company, alone, try to do these.

1. Put a kettle on, and make some tea. Or make a cold mocha drink, so you'd have the comfort of chocolate and the kick of coffee and the who-knows-what of milk. (Cowness?) You'll have very confused physiological reactions not to mention wakefulness, but number 4 below will take care of that.

2. Put on a sweater, if you haven't already. Even if you live in Manila, it's somewhat cool enough this time of year to wear one. Preferably one with holes in it, just so that you know you're at home and nobody really would care. There is a small comfort in that.

3. Work, if you work at home. Don't overdo it (although if you work at home "overdoing it" might take on a different meaning, but whatever. You're at home. Nobody really would notice.)

4. Inevitably, go down rabbit holes. 

Into the acoustics of St. Pancras Old Church.

Just for setting the scene, here's what it looks like from the outside. (And here's some information about it.)

From the inside, though, it looks like this:

Architectural pedantry aside, here's what it sounds like inside. 

(4a. Put some damned good headphones on. Go on, put the best one you got. I'll wait.)

If you listen to Marques Toliver's White Sails and its raw, almost rough musicality (although part of that is due to the recording equipment) and almost haunting lyrics, you hear the acoustics of the place reverb inside the violin, which in itself already has a very eerily unique reverb. (Who was it that said that the violin is the most human of musical instruments? Either Anne Rice or Nietzsche. Oh, gods, have I come to a point in my life where those two are in the same sentence..? No matter.)  

In contrast you can then listen to the clean lines of Jason Mraz's I Won't Give Up (although the lady at the acoustic drum box could've been less heavy-handed with its bass), and briefly wonder why your brain went from dying in a river to still being friends in the end. But again, no matter. You can hear the place just the same, also inside the guitar, but in a different way than it reverbs in a violin. This is not a reverb as much as a creation of a different echo altogether.

But then. Goddamnit. You get to Sam Smith's I've Told You Now, and just goddamnit. The acoustics in this place. The acoustics of Smith's lungs. The acoustics of everything put together. It's a sweater with holes that belong to you alone, it's a drink of whatever potency, it is being and feeling. It is sound. The lyrics almost don't matter. Listen to this thing. Listen.

So, having done all that,

5. Then you might want  to learn a new word for capturing something that has exceeded what you have had before. For this I suggest "fremish."

fremish

(vb. third-person singular simple present fremishes, present participle fremishing, simple past and past participle fremished)

To shiver, shudder.

(from Middle English fremyssh, fremysshen, from [the stem of] Middle French fremir, from Late Latin fremīre, from Latin fremere, related to fremito, fremitus, a roaring, a palpable vibration)

6. And it being New Year, you might then want to look at your life choices and put them side by side sound this pure and weep for whatever reason. No matter.

Ah, and here's a last thing to make you hear a song recorded professionally in the same place. Sharon Van Etten's Our Love.

But then you know you've hit the rock bottom of the rabbit hole if you listen to lyrics like these. Ah well. You can always fremish.

7. Oh, PS. Apart from you possibly wanting to have learned a new word, you also might want to have an insight. For this I suggest that you consider the idea that in listening to whatever, it is the holes and the spaces that you listen to. Take a gander at what Marshall McLuhan says in The Medium is the Message: "Until writing was invented, man lived in an acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror." In trembling and where you fremish in a space that is not a space where ultimately words don't matter at all.

Happy New Year.

Image credits: 

https://blog.ticketweb.co.uk/venue-guides/venue-guide-st-pancras-old-church-7532

https://www.laurelcanyonuk.com/st-pancras-old-church-kings-cross-london/