Growing up in Massachusetts, where puffy winter coats always covered Halloween costumes and the cold lasted until late April, seasonal reinvention became a way of life. Now, I find myself treasuring nighttime and darkness as the overcast begins to consume more of our days.
Even as we disappear beneath layers of jackets and vests and our senses dull in darkness, fall offers us a chance to return to the self. We are able to get lost in our thoughts as the weather gets less forgiving. I say we welcome these thoughts, taking them in with the dark and somber of autumn. Join me in appreciating these shorter days, finding an emotionality and yearning in the absence of light.
Beach House: “Space Song”
The temporal rhythm of the drum track is overlain by sweeping guitar chords. For me, this song speaks to a period of transition. The lyrics lend themselves to the uncertainty we may experience as the seasons progress and as fall continues to show itself (believe me, it gets colder). My favorite lyric, “tender is the night for a broken heart,” vocalizes my appreciation for autumn, nighttime, and the earlier dusk as the days progress; this too, can be nurturing. We are held and anonymous within the darkness, and we are free to feel things more deeply.
Mitski: “My Love Mine All Mine”
Mitski expresses an appreciation for life and death as unavoidable and further acknowledges nature as a guide for these necessary shifts in time. With the trees, wind, and setting skies accompanying, I take change as inevitable. With her lyric, “here before and after me, shining down on me,” change is thought of not only as inevitable but as rhythmic, recurring, and larger than ourselves. The cyclical nature of seasons helps me embrace the ways in which life repeats itself.
Lord Huron: “The Night We Met”
This song itself practically shudders in the cold, with its opening cries and the gentle tremble of Ben Schneider’s voice. We are guided through a stunning snapshot of a night in someone’s life and their yearning to return. A fall night can easily bring back memories that are left untouched in the spring and summer.
Cigarettes After Sex: “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby”
There is something about the isolation of Greg Gonzalez's voice in the microphone, separate from the guitar strums in the background that remind me of the dwindling days of sun. The threadbare nature of this song and the reverberations of the drums cause the listener to focus on the gentle vocals. The brooding baseline centers me in a cold evening as I search for heat and security, given nothing more than the consolation of the song’s repeating lyrics. As we appreciate our own heat in the colder weather, this song restores value in the warming presence of another person.
Liana Flores: “Rises the Moon”
Flores speaks to the reliable nature of transition as leaves change from green to deep auburn and then break away altogether. She promises that, soon, unprompted, autumn will change the backdrop in which we live our lives. As the sun shines less and less each day, we realize the growing presence of the moon in the sky. We can take comfort from its illuminating glow and constant presence, even from our far distance.
Bon Iver: “Skinny Love”
This song represents a certain fire — a courage to ask difficult questions — that begins burning brighter in the colder weather as we find our footing before the year comes to an end. In the opening lyrics, Justin Vernon begs the body “come on” and “just last the year,” calling upon it to withstand the increasing demands of the colder seasons. He speaks to the challenges of impermanence, all complications of a long standing relationship vanishing easily, as though they “were never here.” For me, “Skinny Love” tells of a transition. The sweet transience of a fleeting love, as told by Vernon’s lyrics, “in the morning I’ll be with you, but it will be a different kind” further speaks to autumn, bridging the absolutes of winter and summer. Living in a season of transition, we can start to embrace ambiguities as they present in other facets of our lives.
Mazzy Star: “Fade Into You”
With the ethereal ease of Hope Sandoval’s vocals and the gentle buffer of her microphone, she speaks to the hush of darkness, of going in shadows and of a person’s own melancholy. Much like “Space Song,” the song’s title itself helps me to appreciate the safe presence that a deep sky can offer. A darkness that not only allows for authenticity but also distorts and compels, “color[ing] …eyes with what’s not there” in the day. “Fade Into You” is another emotional ode to the grace and grief of familiar evenings, the pain they conceal and the comfort they may bring.
Alela Diane: “White as Diamonds”
Diane serenades as she marvels at the surrounding world — a morning that shines with the pride of withstanding a cold night. She appreciates the stillness and growing dormancy of fall, and eventually, winter. She shifts the spotlight away from things comfortable and instead gives grace to struggle in her remark, “burdened bands gave strong hands,” which I feel is essential to appreciate the colder weather. To me, her lyrics further speak to the annual, gradual shift from warm to cold. With “each patient tug upon the snarl,” we wait for the weather to transition and the year to bring its own nuances. Similar to Schneider’s commentary, we catch a “glimpse of what has been,” and the emotions that consumed us in previous autumns.
With each shift of seasons comes an annual remembrance of years past. While it may be easy to long for the simplicity of nature’s more forgiving seasons, the challenge of darkness brings forth something that light cannot. Solitude and chilled air recenter us to the heat of our being, the core of our vitality and burgeon a new appreciation for our bodies as they hold strong in shifting climates. This is what fall brings to me — a found purpose as the surrounding world gets colder. I get a glimpse again at the child within me, who rushed outside with flushed cheeks in September, crunched leaf piles in October and awaited snow in November.
Alessandra Giragos is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at asg287@cornell.edu.
