Single: Below Freezing at 14th Street – Union Square Station (Self-released, 2025)

Compassion flows through everything, without fore- or afterthought. Pain is still there, when it occurs — you can’t deny the physical world, nor can you deny feelings or emotions.

Ruud Houweling

At 4:15 in the morning on 31 August 2023 my older brother died in a long-term care facility miles from the city where he was born, lived, and worked. He was a union journeyman marine electrician. His closest friends and family lost sight of him the last decade of his life. His death brought to a close an 11-year struggle that began with an extended period of unemployment from his trade in the aftermath of the economic downturn of 2008, and the foreclosure of his home in the wake of overwhelming health crises (compounded by alcohol addiction).

This all put him on the streets of his city — alone, without a plan on how to survive. He had only a few weeks left of mild Pacific Northwest weather to adjust to living unhoused before fall. He didn’t reach out to anyone in his circle of friends, coworkers, union brothers and sisters (he was the recording secretary for his marine unit), or family. He was fiercely independent, proud of his career and no doubt deeply embarrassed by what was happening to him. It was not unusual for him to be out of touch with family. I knew nothing about the crisis that was unfolding.

Just as I began my search for answers about how this could have happened in my own family, I discovered the recording artist Ruud Houweling when he released his new single in January 2025 about the homeless crisis in New York City, “Below Freezing at 14th Street – Union Square Station” (self-released, 2025). His lyrical reflection on the crisis and human cost of those living unhoused, especially in winter, became painfully personal for me.

It’s a crushing outcome to acknowledge: Every family can have a bright, creative, independent child, sibling, parent, cousin, aunt, or uncle unhoused — without ever intending for it to happen to them. We’re left without even the simple means to understand how it happened — to be forced onto the street, left to figure out how to survive in an extremely difficult situation — with nothing. Depending on the survey, it’s estimated that more than 600,000 homeless individuals and families (more than 100,000 of those being children), in the United States faced some level of housing insecurity in 2024, a figure significantly higher than in 2023.

I did some research about homelessness in the New York subway. I wanted to be truthful because of the delicate subject matter. Riding the train back and forth to stay warm, on a train that’s going to a station called Jamaica — this happens.

Ruud Houweling

Ruud and I began an email conversation about his new song and the difficulty of confronting — in art — complex social issues like the increasing numbers of people around the world living without safe, affordable housing. How can songwriting come close to scaling with the problem it addresses? How did it affect him? Using a New York train station as both prompt and metaphor to start his writing process, Ruud created a song that avoids judgement while crafting a poignant metaphor for everyone’s desire to be safe in their home.

“It’s an actual experience I’ve had on that exact platform. When the syllables of the name of that train station aligned with the meter and melody, that’s when it struck me that the train station might work as a metaphor to underline the factors of chance and destiny,” says Houweling. “Nobody really knows where they’re going. Stuff just happens as we go along. All we can do is try to stay true to that faint notion we might have, inside, a sense of what’s right.”

Ours is not a golden age of political songwriting as it was, say, in 1965 or 1968, when popular songs helped artists and fans express their confusion and anger in a way that hadn’t been done before on a large scale. We have lots of huge social, political, and environmental problems. Why don’t we have the songs?

The American Civil Rights Movement, for example, had the American Folk Music Revival as a vehicle to connect people from many parts of society. Not all the songs were expressly political, but the revival helped connect people with complex social and political problems without patronizing or disrespecting their subjects or audiences. It’s a tragedy that in an unprecedented age of global connection expressing deeply felt views through art can so easily be seen as polarizing or not seen at all.

Do we pick the safe option or the unsafe option? I like the thought that when something is scaring me it might be interesting to investigate it. ‘Exciting’ and ‘scary’ are close relatives.

Ruud Houweling

“Below Freezing at 14th Street – Union Square Station” lyrically pivots on the phrase, “the lucky ones.”

“The subject of homelessness is so delicate and complex,” says Houweling. “A ‘lucky one’ is what I thought I was when, for a second, I tried to view myself as I might be seen through the eyes of the unfortunate ones who didn’t have anywhere to go late at night in the freezing cold.”

As connected (and “lucky”) as I feel today, I still lost my brother to the overwhelming complexities and speed of modern life. He was “out there,” so I assumed he was OK. Because we do.

After working over 30 years my brother found himself evicted, unhoused, without income, struggling with deteriorating mental and physical health. What he needed was something as ordinary and simple as compassion. Symbolized by Houweling in his moving song as a train ride with its routine destination, a trusted and reliable conveyance back to a lost way of life. We see these systems and people every day.

My brother dropped from my sight. He became invisible in his community. A decade passed, he found help enough to receive safe, warm, temporary housing, and he died in a care facility miles from his home. With him was a nurse and a social worker, who filled out his death certificate. In his final months, he listed no living family or friends.

Failing with a full heart is better than regretting not having tried.

Ruud Houweling

^* “Below Freezing at 14th Street – Union Square Station” is an insightful and touching song created by a recording artist profoundly engaged with the lyrical and spiritual possibilities of his craft. This article is Part I of a two-part series on the songwriting of Netherlands-based recording artist Ruud Houweling. The opening quote comes from his song, “The Bigger Picture,” on his 2023 LP, “Accidental Pictures,” the subject of the next article.

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Credits

“Accidental memories” / Anchor photograph by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.com.

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With deep gratitude to Ruud Houweling, this post was created in memory of my older brother,
Howard D Ellison JR (1958-2023).
You are missed.