Autumn Fever

"So," my friend asked, "how are you?"  It was a Friday morning at the very beginning of October, a day of fierce almighty storms that battered the house with hot thunder and rain so sparse and windblown it was almost dry.

"I'm all right," I replied.  "Feeling something change inside me.  I'm restless."

"You feel like you want to do something?" she asked.  "Like there is a burst of energy in you or you're longing for something?  Perhaps feeling a bit anxious for something?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed, amazed how she had managed to elaborate my feelings so perfectly.

"Autumn," she diagnosed succinctly.

It didn't take much reflection before I realized she was right.  I have always loved the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," in a most deep and personal way.  I was born in the very heart of autumn; gifted with a spirit of soil and mist, and a proclivity to austerity and decadence.  When the leaves begin to turn, I feel myself called back to a home I never knew, to an unsettling and familiar wildness.

With the coming of autumn I am feral and expansive and lonely - so full of feeling I can hardly stand it, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I want to spin in circles and run into walls and be honest and honest and honest.  I want to take risks and drink clear cold water.  I want to write a song and stub my toe and sing and bleed.  I feel so primal! and I want to love: without a destination or a target, if I must, just loving for the sake of loving.

I feel fearsome.  Powerful.  Tremendous.  Untouchable.  Charmed.  Strange!

It is hard to capture the delicate tremulous expansiveness of it in words alone.  When I go out to walk in the brisk moist autumn air, whether it be by day when the whole world is the bright color of scattered light, or by night when the streetlamps color the mist like the haze from a fire - I take my iPod.  Everything sounds different against a backdrop of infinite possibility, but there are certain songs that enhance the effect.  In this climate of sky and soul I want to hear music as plaintive and pensive as my own meditations, wide and acoustic and resonant.

Here is a playlist of the songs I love to hear in these days of brilliant gloom, songs that capture some of the beautiful yearning ache that surrounds me at this time.  I have tried to reflect all the moods of the autumn here: tender and fierce, hopeful and despairing.  It is my hope that I have captured in this list a small piece of the season's melancholy splendor, to dip back into at will the other three-quarters of the year.

TRACK LISTING:
Somethin' Grand (Madeleine Peyroux)
Black Winged Bird (Nina Persson)
Moving (Kate Bush)
La Soñadora (Enya)
Sibeling (Depeche Mode)
Scarborough Fair (Rosalind McAllister)
Who I Was Born to Be (Susan Boyle)
Anywhere Is (Enya)
The Ash Grove (Michelle Amato)
Circle (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Pax Deorum (Enya)
Time to Say Goodbye (Sarah Brightman)
Fallen Embers (Enya)
Memory (Barbra Streisand)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
I Won't Stay Long (Sixpence None the Richer)

Although I'm sure any commentary on these songs would only be gilding the lily, I can't resist a few brief liner notes, as it were.

Somethin' Grand - This is a lovely, gentle song that somehow embodies that sweet restless feeling of great things on the horizon.  "Wide awake, breath taken / I'm shaken by my sight / Couldn't sleep, couldn't keep / Quiet secrets on the wind I hear."

Black Winged Bird - The sweetness of this pretty tune belies the strength and resignation and painful maturity of the lyrics: "I made up my mind to be a black-winged bird / Never turn my head for how things were . . . And I'll soar on my way / Sad as the state of things we can't change."

Moving - The music and the lyrics of the hauntingly unusual song are perfectly bound together, and the unabashedly plaintive yearning is evident.  "How I'm moved / How you move me / With your beauty's potency / You give me life / Please don't let me go / You crush the lily in my soul."

La Soñadora - This pensive tune casts a graceful spell, like waking up from a lovely but scarcely-remembered dream.  "I; the autumn . . . I have been an echo . . . I have been everything, I am myself . . . I am she who dreams."

Sibeling - This ominous, airy instrumental evokes the cries of seagulls on a day heavy with portents of storm.

Scarborough Fair - The plaintive futility of this English folk song could break your heart, if you let yourself think about it (which I suggest you do): "Tell her to make me a cambric shirt . . . Without no seam nor needle work . . . Tell her to find me an acre of land . . . Between the salt water and the sea strand / Then she'll be a true love of mine."

Who I Was Born to Be - This is a perfect hymn of new beginning: acknowledging the hurts and damages of the past, but soaring beyond them.  "When I was a child / There were flowers that bloomed in the night / Unafraid to take in the light / Unashamed to have braved the dark / Though I may not know the answers / I can finally say I am free / And if the questions led me here / Then I am who I was born to be."

Anywhere Is - The strong, sweeping melody could so easily overwhelm the lyrics if they did not possess a power all their own: "The moon upon the ocean / Is swept around in motion / But without ever knowing / The reason for its flowing / In motion on the ocean / The moon still keeps on moving / The waves still keep on waving / And I still keep on going."

The Ash Grove - This traditional Welsh folk song has lent its tune to several hymns and even a political ditty, but these lyrics by John Oxenford perfectly capture the nostalgia of the melody, celebrating the beauty of nature ("The ash grove how graceful, how plainly 'tis speaking / The wind through it playing has language for me") and the memory of lost loved ones ("Each step brings a memory as freely I roam . . . The dear ones I long for again gather here / From ev'ry dark nook they press forward to meet me").  And in autumn that ash grove might look something like this, which is enough to justify its inclusion here, I think.

Circle - This is a perfect song of defiant solitude, and it sounds just amazing outdoors on an autumn night, when "the streets are wet" and "the colors slip into the sky."  "I quit, I give up / Nothing's good enough for anybody else / It seems / And being alone is the best way to be . . . When I'm by myself, nobody else can say goodbye / Everything is temporary anyway."

Pax Deorum - The chanted Latin lyric that constitutes the greatest part of the song doesn't quite make grammatical sense, though it's clearly some sort of summoning invocation.  The power of the chant is more important than the meaning, though; this lovely piece evokes the awesome force of a storm rising, raging, and breaking.  Turn this one up loud.

Time to Say Goodbye - You don't have to know a word of Italian to hear the yearning in this beautiful song, but the lyrics are deeply powerful in their own right: "I'll leave with you / On ships upon seas / That I know / Exist no longer / It's time to say goodbye."  I can't listen to this song without wanting to love with all my heart, even if hurts.

Fallen Embers - This is an almost painfully beautiful song about the memory of something impossibly poignant.  "Once, as the night was leaving / Into us our dreams were weaving / Once, all dreams were worth keeping / I was with you."

Memory - There are songs of resignation, and their are songs of resolution.  And then there's "Memory."  Autumnal in setting ("The withered leaves collect at my feet . . . Burnt out ends of smoky days") as well as ambience, this song makes me ache and dream in the same tone.  "I remember the time I knew what happniess was / Let the memory live again . . . I must think of a new life / And I mustn't give in . . . Another day is dawning."

Fields of Gold - This truly haunting song seems to reveal a new mood to me every time I listen to it: joy, love, tension, loss: "You'll remember me when the west wind moves / Upon the fields of barley / You can tell the sun in his jealous sky / When we walked in fields of gold."  I'm not a huge fan of music videos, but I watched this one twice, then downloaded it.  It's simple, powerful, and perfectly suited to the song.  If you've never seen it, please don't deny yourself.

I Won't Stay Long - I can say for certain that my friend and I aren't the only ones afflicted with autumn fever.  Lyricist Sam Ashworth clearly gets it too.  I couldn't express the feeking of sweet autumnal melancholy better than the words of this song: "Leaves are falling, and something's calling me here / The state of depression that I'm walking in / Got the impression that I won't stay here long / I know I am like this, but still I don't know what to do / The sky is darkening, I can feel it in the air / My heart is sinking, I know winter's on its way."