THE SNOW QUEEN IS COMING

On Christmas 1992, three Norwegian ladies presented me with a gift: "The Complete Illustrated Stories" by Hans Christian Andersen.

On the 947 pages of the book, there are 140 stories written by the Danish author, but one of them made me write two songs with the same theme: “The Snow Queen”.

The first song I wrote about her was "Gerda & Kay" and was featured on The Flowers Of Romance album, "Pleasure & the Pain" which was released in 1993.

The second one, entitled "The Snow Queen is Coming" was released by New Zero God on December 24, 2022, and it is available exclusively on Bandcamp.

What struck me about the story of the Snow Queen is a set of things:

Andersen begins his story by telling us that the devil, in the shape of an evil troll, created a mirror that magnifies the ugliness and the bad aspects and shrinks the good and the beautiful.

When he and other trolls tried to raise the mirror to heaven to make fools of the angels and God, it fell from their hands and was shattered into a million pieces. Some of these splinters got into people's eyes and changed their view of the world. Some got into people's hearts and made them become cold as ice.

I was already intrigued.

These metaphysical symbols used in old days are very dear to me and, just to give another example, I wrote the song "Damaged" influenced by Anatol France's "Revolt of the Angels" (published in 1921) which opens the album "MMXIII" by New Zero God.

But back to the Snow Queen:

Two small children - a boy, named Kay, and a girl, named Gerda - live as neighbors and love each other as if they were brother and sister. But one day the Snow Queen appears outside Kay's house and shortly after, a piece of the troll's magic mirror enters his eye and reaches his heart, turning it into ice. He then begins to misbehave towards Gerda and can only see the ugliness in things.

Then the Queen takes him with her and Gerda sets out to find him, fearing he is dead.

I won't make a spoiler here.

The Snow Queen is, at its core, a story about good and evil.  And while good may have a happy ending, evil does not necessarily have a bad ending. Evil continues to exist.

Of course, the mirror and the ice are symbols that have great significance in the story. The mirror represents the unhealthy cynicism that destroys childhood innocence: significantly, when Kay is 'contaminated' by the splinter of the magic mirror's glass, he wants to go play with the older boys, suggesting that childhood is being replaced by adolescence and therefore he shows disrespect and neglects Gerda.

But the glass does not infect everyone: Gerda retains her innocence even as she grows older.

So there are two themes that the story deals with.

One is the passage from childhood to adolescence and the other is that love conquers cynicism.  The cynicism is symbolized by Kay's way of looking at things.

Now, the lyrics of the song "The Snow Queen is Coming" that I wrote, have the form of a threat.

It is a danger warning:

The Snow Queen is coming

Don't let her kiss you twice

One kiss will make you numb

And one will close your eyes

Check our Bandcamp page for the rest.

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