Listen to the musings of Bria, Oliver, Rosy, Zoe and Tahmina as they discuss the coldest of seasons in these winterviews conducted by Zoe.

What does winter mean to you?

How does it make you feel?

Do you view it as a season of endings or a necessary pause before a renewal?

May you be warm and cosy this winter! – Zoe

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Transcript

I’m recording this from inside our gallery in the centre of Manchester. The clocks went backwards last night while I was sleeping and now it’s 4pm and the lights already fading outside, but I can still see the leaves that are turning golden on the trees.  

Soon the room I’m sat in will become a warm window that people wander about as they pass by on the pavement below. It’s the end of October now and winter has started, and I wanted to talk a bit about how that makes us feel.  

My own relationship with winter has always felt complicated. I love the awakening of spring and the hot, long days of summer. They allow me the time and the chances I’m always chasing. 9pm is early, and even when I’m tired, the heat bleeds into the state I’m in and washes it out. When the haze dies away, I have to find things to hold on to. But this sudden dependency on surfaces and edges can disturb me and make my days feel squared. Even though I like the way a breeze might cut and coming back inside with my cheeks stinging red, shedding layer after layer to readjust and sinking to somebody’s house, it is hard for me to stay this still. The thought that seems to help me through this phase of the year is knowing that it is part of something larger. The belief that winter has to happen for the other stuff to feel the way it does. I have to watch it all close around me to let the world open on the other side again.  

The writer Catherine May in her book wintering latches on to the idea of winter as an in between time into which people fall and hide, somewhere they can hurt and repair themselves. I talked to some of my colleagues on the visitor team about this idea and whether they perceive winter in this way. I went to them with the following quote and asked them to respond.  

There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into somewhere else. Somewhere else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on. Perhaps I was already teetering on the brink of somewhere else anyway, but now I fell through. Winter had begun.

“So, I think I kind of see winter as a liminal space.” 

“Winter often feels like a time of resting and pausing, and everything gets a lot slower pace.” 

“When you’re in winter, it feels like that’s all you’ve ever known, and when winter’s gone…it feels like this kind of imaginary space that you don’t really know what it feels like unless you’re there, or you know until you’re back there again.” 

“Yeah, cause I see summer as so manic.” 
 
“Yeah” 
 
“Like I’m always like and I love summer. I’m such a a summer person. But I do. I find it hard to know where I am sometimes. And I think I lean into that at the start of it, I get really like…err oh my god amazing like it’s happening and I can do all this stuff, but then towards the end of summer, I start to feel quite like burnt out, but not in a not in such a not in like a, you know, the way that we typically think of being burnt out in work and stuff.” 

“No. Yeah, yeah. Just like overexposed.” 

“Overexposed, yeah. Yeah, or just like a bit tangled in myself. A bit lost. I like your description of clarity…from winter. “ 

“Cause often kind of like I see summer’s been more of like a haze in that kind of like it. Like everything just seems just a bit more kind of like clouded, especially like in city centre when you’re kind of walking around and just all like the smells the city like, you know, you know, like the vape smokes, alcohol, like food to see it’s just more like, just more like a fog you gotta cut through.  
 
I’m definitely someone who kind of almost feels if like I kind of thrive more in winter and colder temperatures than in the spring and summer, which is kind of weird considering that I basically grew up in hot climates before I moved to England. But I guess it’s just kind of like, I’m just still not, I’m just still can’t get over like the novelty of like winter. And I guess I definitely agree with the quote saying that winter is something that’s necessary because to me everything just becomes a bit more like clearer a bit more kind of like starker…like, even though the leaves are falling and some people have kind of view that as like, oh, it’s like the death of trees, I kind of view that as like the start of something else. Kind of like shedding what was old. And kind of like laying stark with the bare bones of kind of what already exists. So you kind of start to see things in a new light.” 

“I do think…some people…thrive…better in other seasons. I don’t know why that is, but I think some people love summer and then can feel both physically and mentally quite low when the days get, you know, shorter and darker. It’s probably the best time to be getting together. Because otherwise you’re on your own drawing quite a sort of…dark period in terms of seasons and it’s probably the best time to be around other people. Be in a community and just sort of and it almost gives you a boost to get through to the new year.” 

“There’s also a distinction between like the human created versions of winter versus like the natural winter. So, if you think about what winter means inside of a house or within a community it probably means like wrapping up and keeping warm and being together. Whereas outside it’s quite like harsh and desolate and bleak and quiet. I think that a lot of people carry a lot more traditions in wintertime, especially in like the Western world with Christmas and stuff. But a lot, I wonder whether we make traditions like get us through bleaker periods to kind of form connections with people and make…make it so that we have things to look forward to and connect to ourselves with other people.” 

“I’ve never been like much of a Christmas person, but I’ve always enjoyed this sort of buildup of sort of like staff dos, and you know, like they run up in school to the Christmas holidays and there’s just this kind of like particular spirit where even though it gets cold, it doesn’t really feel cold because of that kind of jovial, jolly thing that everyone’s doing and I think that’s quite nice.  
 
I like getting cosy, but also, I think I’m not sure how much that outweighs the going outside and being a bit miserable, you know. There’s a space in which I do think of winter as somewhere else. Well kind of its somewhere else and somewhere very here at the same time, because everything slows down so you sort of see everything unfold in front of you in a way that for me makes me feel closer to the world, but also sort of further from it at the same time, in that all of the things that I enjoy, like, you know, sitting in the park or seeing people, kind of stop happening in the same way as everything goes into this state of hibernation.” 

“I think I still work hard to socialise because I don’t really know what else to do, but do you have any particular memories or stories that evoke this sense of winter that you kind of, when you’re imagining winter and that it’s coming or when the days start getting like they are now, and you’re anticipating the rest of it. Is there anything like any images or memories that come back to you specifically that feel like winter to you.” 

“I guess what feels like winter to me is probably kind of like…the food and I guess sharing that with friends and family. In that whenever we were living away in Singapore and California, it meant we couldn’t really spend Christmas with extended family. Like I never really had the experience of having like oh you have like 20 aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas come descending on your house as a day of mayhem. It’s kind of always been the four of us. So, we kind of always made sure that we made plans with like extended family friends to kind of just like, you know have fun and enjoy ourselves. Because you know well, especially in the states, because it’s not really that big of a family holiday because like Thanksgiving, you kind of take that box or why we want to do that a month later. So, Christmas Eve kind of became a thing where a lot of the families and extended families descend on this one friend’s house and just kind of like watch movies. We do dinner and the kids would be off like screwing around the backyard, while the adults would be like in the dining room. And then at one point, one of the dads would get dressed up as a Santa Claus and then like chase out and then like chase around the house as we try and like catch him.” 

“I think my favourite thing about winter and actually that’s quite a difficult statement to make because there’s many things that I like about winter but I suppose my favourite thing is the idea and I suppose being in it as well in the moment, but of being really cosy at home with like a cup of tea and a blanket and the fire running and fire burning, and some really thick socks and just watching the world go by through the window. It’s just one of the best feelings in the world and you know that you don’t have to leave the house for the day. There’s nothing that needs your urgent attention or anything like that. No errands to run. It’s just…It’s the best feeling. 

“Because you’re just contained.” 

“Yeah, you’re inside. You’re all cosy and you just watch the world go by.” 

“I like that”  
 
“Yeah. And then it gets me thinking about the I suppose the flip side to that is what I was telling you yesterday about when you’re, at least when I’m driving home after work in winter, is looking sort of through the windows of people’s houses. I’ve not got my face pressed up to the window. But like looking at like their Christmas decorations and what lights that they’ve got on and ohh they’ve chosen like a silver Christmas tree or a green Christmas tree or a gold Christmas tree, and seeing like you know how much effort they’ve put into it and seeing people in like their Christmas jumpers and whatnot. There’s, yeah, It’s sort of like a look into how others live. And it just makes me want to just rush home to recreate that same feeling…”