Autumn is for music. And cocktails.
We can be glad the bad years are over, and yet still think about how it's nice to revisit them.
I’m a little late in writing this one, since all the “oh man, fall is here” takes happened four or five weeks ago and peaked with the annual round of Pumpkin Spice Latte essays. This one from the Atlantic was my favorite.
All of this autumn-centered discussion gets at the thing that we like to dwell on this time of year — Fall is such a vibe. The trees, sure, and the sweaters and the cold air and the wet leaves and the front yards with crazy, over-the-top Halloween decorations.. it’s all a thing. It’s the thing that Starbucks is doing its damnedest to bottle into a PSL and sell it in liquid form. Personally, I find the PSL disgusting as a coffee drink, but it’s not really about being a “coffee drink,” is it, and I can accept that others have positive feelings about it.1
But sugary not-coffee drinks aside, I still want to lean heavy into autumn, like everyone else. The time change is hitting me hard this year, and I’ve slept horribly the last three nights. The sky has been overcast and featureless for what feels like a month and a half now (it’s been like 2 days). It’s been “cold” but not actually cold — no one in Chicago should be busting out their full winter parka just yet, but it did snow last week, and we’re down to that period when wearing just a t-shirt around the house feels like it might not be enough. It’s all a reminder, in other words, that things are about to get *worse* in a material sense. There’s a need to bear down, make ready for the long cold nights ahead. And convincing ourselves that this time of year is actually cozy and warm and a chance to reconnect with ourselves and practice self-care.. it’s a good way to approach it.
So in that spirit, I’m going to do some baking this week. I’ll also make a stew or maybe a gigantic homemade lasagna. I’ve been trying to go to the gym more regularly, because I’m priming myself for the idea that life is slower now — it’s not as full of fun, crazy things, and the discipline that comes with working out on an orderly schedule will help keep me balanced emotionally and physically in the months ahead. I don’t mean to suggest that life is just going to be miserable for the next four months, but it is distinctly not-summer, and not-vacation-funtime, so one has to wrestle with that. There are family holidays to attend, and obligations that must be met, and joy must be found in doing things that are a little smaller and less boisterous. That’s a good thing. It helps punctuate the space in between the times that are more frenetic. I want to lean into fall, but I want to do it my way, not the apple-picking, PSL-infused, meme-ified way that exists on Instagram.
Most importantly, I’m turning back to fall music. I know “fall music” isn’t really a specific, defined genre for most people. Christmas music is a thing. And there’s good music out there that’s suitable for like.. a soundtrack for leaf peeping in New England, I guess. Yes, fine, there’s also that one album and the other one if you’re into that sort of thing, but that’s not the music I’m talking about.
For me, this time of year, I turn to one album specifically — Eveningland by Hem. This was not a major, earth-shattering release when it came out in October of 2004. Hem was a folk/indie band from Brooklyn that never really caught on outside the NPR Weekend Edition crowd, and they broke up around 2013.2 Eveningland was their second and most successful album. I don’t remember what inspired me to buy the album when it came out (on CD, mind), but I have distinct memories of what it felt like when I first listened to it.
In the fall of 2004, I was living in St. Louis in this very apartment. The apartment was a 1BR, but it was massive and drafty, and pre-war with a lot of moulding and high ceilings and clanky radiator heat, like a lot of old St. Louis relics.3 It was my first semester of law school, and finals week was rapidly approaching. I had moved to the city a few months earlier to start the semester, and I had probably only made one or two actual friends at that point. What I remember about that time is that life was just so, so stripped down — I was living on my own, in a big city where I barely knew anyone, going to grad school for reasons that weren’t at all clear to me. Nothing about my life felt secure or stable yet. I was a profoundly mediocre law student that first year; I was 24 and I just wanted to keep moving through life and figure out where I was going next, but I had no particular sense that law school was where I belonged. Law school, in fact, sucked a lot, and I was spending an awful lot of time in that apartment by myself just wondering why I was doing what I was doing. I wasn’t any good at being a law student that semester, and I certainly didn’t have anything to show for my efforts. My law school was full of young, ambitous, early career adults who were on their way up, and I … wasn’t that. I was still play acting to see if this particular life move even made sense for me.
There was a coffee shop at the bottom of the hill, down the street from my apartment. They were open every night until 11, and I’d come home after studying there late into the night, still not ready to go to bed, and in those long, dark nights, I’d play Eveningland to help me wind down. The album was warm and comforting and full of a not-quite-defined, abstract sense of melancholy that just matched where I was with everything. It’s an album about heartbreak and family and connections with other people in your life — connections being one thing I didn’t feel like I had much of at all. It was beautiful, and I listened to it constantly that fall. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Thankfully, I’m not quite overcome with that same intense feeling of melancholy every October/November these days. Being out of grad school surely has a lot to do with that. Life is a bit more settled now. The years have a rhythm to them that kind of normalizes everything. Having lived through 40-some autumns just feels different than only having experienced a mere two dozen of them. But there’s a certain vulnerable, almost scared sadness from that time in my life that still feels nice to revisit, and for me that vibe is captured near perfectly in this album still. So I pour a glass of wine and listen to it as the days grow shorter. It helps mark the changing of the seasons.
Of course, other people have distinct fall albums, too, even if there is no distinct genre that’s called that. I know for some, Nico’s Chelsea Girl really hits that precise note. At other times in my life, S. Carey or the Better Oblivion Community Center album have served that purpose. This year I discovered the band Tiny Habits, which I really like in a good autumn-centered sorta way. I hope they come out with more stuff. There’s no particular reason why it had to be Hem that formed the soundtrack to my autumnal gloominess. But Hem it was, and coming back to this album year after year is something I really cherish.
So tonight I’m going to listen to Hem, and I’m going to make myself a negroni (or actually a boulevardier is probably more appropriate). Boozy cocktails served in a rocks glass, with the lights dimmed low .. this is also part of the Eveningland vibe I try to lean into. It’s autumn. Thanks to climate change on the front end, and the Christmas industrial complex that sits lurking at the rear, it’s the shortest of seasons. It’s also the season that calls for taking stock of life and feeling one’s feelings. I’ll drink to that.
It’s a little bit of an internet meme at this point, but I like the notion of the PSL as a simulacrum of fall. It’s sort of a play on the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard in his book Simulacra and Simulation. The idea is that the PSL is a meaningless derivative product that comes from our idea of fall — we start from the premise that pumpkins represent “fall” (even though they do not, they’re just pumpkins).. and then something that can call to mind a pumpkin would also represent fall — but the PSL doesn’t even do that — it is itself just a sugar drink, devoid of meaning. But the idea of “pumpkin spice” as a thing — and the idea that the PSL perfectly captures whatever abstract notion we call to mind when we use that term — it all rolls together into one giant symbolic representation — the PSL is fall. This is true even though, given the capitalist world we live in, the engineered, sugary chemical concoction that makes up a PSL could absolutely be made any time of year, under any circumstances. There’s no reason to associate the PSL with “fall” whatsoever, other than that we we’ve told ourselves that the two ideas go together.
Except it turns out they posted to their FB page back in September that they’re working on new music again? Who knew!
Looks like it’s gotten a fresh coat of paint since I lived there, but basically nothing else has changed!
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/flamme-en-el-lobscurite
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/girls-girls-girls
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/shades-of-gray