194. Song No. 2,922: “Eet,” Regina Spektor
Far, 2009

There is zero overlap between my skating life and this blog. I’ve barely been on the ice since January 2020, partly because of a job change but mostly because my rinks don’t seem to be terribly interested in mask mandates and I don’t love skating enough to risk compromising my long-term health for it.

But I love it enough to feel its absence and badly miss it. I miss the early morning freestyle sessions, I miss a satisfying lesson, I miss every inch of hard-won progress, I miss leaving all my worries at the threshold where that rubberized blade-friendly flooring meets the surface of the rink and those first steps onto the ice that give way to flying. I miss my skater body, too, but I can’t pretend that I’m surprised it got subsumed by a largely sedentary pandemic lifestyle.

Before I went on a lengthier-than-anticipated skating hiatus, one of my coaches and I were choreographing a short program for a still-untaken freestyle test; music isn’t a necessary component but whenever I ran through the test elements, I skated to “Eet,” a song that makes my heart sing. It’s easy to skate out of sheer love of the sport, but it’s remarkable what a little musical accompaniment can do for the artistry, movement and inspiration that make skating an art just as much of an athletic pursuit. This is one of those songs that always felt like it could be meant for me and me alone, a feeling that finds sublime parallels in wide-open 6 a.m. ice rinks and all the things that make them transformative spaces.

And, parasocial distortions of reality be damned, it’s also a song that makes me believe Regina and I would totally be pals in real life, an inkling I am increasingly convinced of whenever I listen to her more experimental, joyfully unconventional songs. You have to be secure in your talents and the place you’ve claimed as your niche to pepper your second major-label record with dolphin sounds, abrupt vocalizations and other amusical outbursts, and a generous helping of nonsense words, and Far‘s bold display of confidently whimsical weirdness feels a lot like kinship to me.

“Eet,” a title of oft-discussed and maddeningly pondered potential meanings ranging from an old Russian radio station’s call letters to a lyrical placeholder, is just a beautifully lilting and heartfelt piece of music no matter its name. Soulful stirrings accompanied by laid-bare confessions like “You spend half of your life trying to fall behind” and “You’re using your headphones to drown out your mind” are impossible to resist singing along to as the vocals and the music rise to meet that soaring emotional crescendo. It’s the kind of song that feels destined for a place in one’s personal soundtrack to accompany everyday life’s highs and lows and the always-evolving state of personal growth, and it is the very definition of a musical all-the-time-food. There is never a time or place that can’t be made better by bringing this song along for the ride, especially when it’s the only companion you need.