My Autumn Playlist

Because "Autumn" in L.A. is negligible at best, I have to live my seasons vicariously through media. I tend to make music playlists, for example, to play in my car or iPod whenever I want to feel like I'm living in some crisp, fall-like place. I do this for other seasons as well. It works fairly well, I think.

Anyway, the following is my "Autumn 2008" playlist. These songs alternate between a sort of shiftless urban malaise and a midwestern harvest-time sturdiness. It will make more sense if you hear the songs (which are mostly available for mp3 purchase, wherever you purchase your tunes).

"Cold Wind" - Arcade Fire: Songs about cold winds always strike me as quintessentially autumnal.

"Memorial" - Explosions in the Sky: Explosions in the Sky makes music that I will always associate with fall, maybe because I'll always associate them with Friday Night Lights.

"Victoria's Secret" - Quiet Village: The schmaltzy, early-80s-nighttime soap vibe of this track has a strangely nostalgic, haunting effect.

"Sonho Dourado" - Daniel Lanois: Truly one of the great instrumental treasures from Daniel "I produced The Joshua Tree" Lanois.

"Guilty Cubicles" - Broken Social Scene: Aptly used in the film Half Nelson, this song has one of the most curiously appropriate titles ever.

"Closing Scene" - The Radio Dept: A fall mix would not be complete without some neo-shoegazer lamentation from The Radio Dept!

"UK" - Burial: My second favorite song for turning up in my car when I'm driving in L.A. late at night.

"Lemon Tree" - Herb Alpert & Thievery Corporation: A truly gorgeous song I recently discovered featuring Thievery Corporation's treatment of jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert.

"Trials" - Damien Jurado: From his brand new album, this Damien Jurado track finds him sounding remarkably like Nick Drake

"Constants Are Changing" - Boards of Canada: The title says it all.

"Torn Blue Foam Couch" - Grand Archives: I highly suggest this new Sub Pop band. Very easy-listening with a touch of nostalgia.

"Rollercoaster" - M. Ward: My new favorite song from quiet alt-country folkster M. Ward.

"Too Late" - M83: My third favorite song for turning up in my car when I'm driving in L.A. late at night.

"Yardwork in November" - The Actual Tigers: I haven't heard anything from this obscure band since this song, but I really like it. Sounds kinda like Paul Simon-esque folk.

"Long Nights" - Eddie Vedder: One of many great songs from Vedder's spectacular Into the Wild soundtrack.

"Family Tree" - TV on the Radio: From their new album; a brilliant, subtle ballad from an increasingly impressive band.

"Peace of Mind" - Mindy Smith: What I listen to on stressful days.

"Ponytails" - Panda Bear: My favorite song for turning up in my car when I'm driving in L.A. late at night.

"Fljótavík" - Sigur Ros: Simple but devastating.

"Meadowlarks" - Fleet Foxes: Can't get enough of Fleet Foxes' beautiful Appalachian-inspired tunes, which are thoroughly autumnal.

"Auntie's Lock/Infinitum" - Flying Lotus: A solemn beaut from hip hop producer Steve Ellison (aka Flying Lotus).

Rilke on Autumn

I think Rilke says it all...

"Autumn Day"

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them to ripeness, and chase the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore. Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time, will stay up, read, write long letters, and wander the avenues, up and down, restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

There is Still Sand in My Suitcase

I’ve been thinking a lot about high school recently, for the following reasons:

• I’m in Kansas City for the weekend, and any time I come home I invariably feel like I’m back in high school. After all, that was really the last time I “lived” here. This is the place my high school friends come back to, where I sometimes uncover a long lost memory from when I was fifteen, where things don’t change quite as fast as they seem to in the rest of the world. 
• I unearthed my old Semisonic CD and blared the cheerfully maudlin song “Closing Time” while driving my dad’s Nissan Altima. Instantly I was transported to the summer after my freshman year in high school.
• I just saw the film American Teen (which I highly recommend), a docu-drama about contemporary high school students in Indiana. It’s like a more-real version of Laguna Beach, set in the Midwest and featuring a tad bit more emotional truth. If nothing else, it’s a deeply nostalgic film, or at least was for me. High school was a caddy, laborious, soul-deadening nightmare for most of the time… but it was also the last stretch of pseudo-innocence and naiveté, which is often a stretch I long to return to. High school is a time of life when things are so tidily regimented, expectations so understood, that we have nothing better to do than invent drama and throw ourselves into it with gleeful abandon. Oh for the days when drama and pain and world-weariness were confections to consume and flaunt as if they were status symbols.
• It’s Labor Day—a holiday I will always associate with being a student. This is the day that marks the end of the summer and the imminent new year of school. It’s the day when we must reckon with our sunburns and summer memories, ceding them to the routine realities of change and autumn and progress. It’s a day when we celebrate the laziness and restlessness of summer, before we have to move on and grow up.

I'm dancing, grooving. This lovely wooden floor. / The tom-toms are beating on. Eyes are so sore. / There is still sand in my suitcase. / There is still salt in my teeth. (The Walkmen, “Donde esta la Playa?”)

I love holidays that are primarily about change. New Year’s Day is the most obvious example, but Labor Day is definitely in this category too (as is Memorial Day, to a lesser extent). Change is so desperately alive, so elemental. It’s the most exciting part of life, and the most challenging. I’m getting ready to move this week from one part of L.A. to another, to start fresh with my own place, a relatively new job and probably overall new rhythms of being. On paper all the changes and challenges are daunting, but new things are nothing new, and that’s a bit of a relief.

All the years keep rolling / The decades flying by / But ahh, the days are long. (“On the Water”)

Now I am listening to the new album from The Walkmen, You & Me, which is incredibly well-fit to the sort of end-of-summer malaise I’m feeling right now (it’s also one of the best albums of 2008… buy it). It’s an album about growing up, leaving behind the endless years of partying and aimless romantic pursuits, coming to grips with adulthood and all that that entails. It’s about acknowledging but moving past cynicism, finding the good amidst failed dreams and unfounded hopes.

Oh, someday when this darkness fades / We’ll wed our girls and move away / We’ll buy some land and build us homes / And no more will we stray. (“Seven Years of Holidays”)

Here in the last days of August, 2008, when hurricanes bear down, oil prices and inflation oppress the struggling among us, politics resign to divisiveness, economies falter, and hope is little more than a catch phrase, the inevitability of change is a small, but significant, consolation. As kids everywhere return to school, another year wiser, and politicians scramble to carve out the course of history that will soon be written, and the spinning world spins storms and calamities towards humans as it always has, we all meet change where we must. It’s exhausting, to be sure, but at least we have Labor Day to breathe.

You keep replaying through the days / That have brought you to this place / You wandered down an open road / and you kept going. (“The Blue Route”)

Ruminations on a Graduation Day

Today I get my Masters degree in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. It’s been a quick but rigorous two year program, and for the most part totally worth my time. This is my third graduation in seven years (the others being high school and Wheaton College), and I have to say that I love putting on that cap and gown every time (and this go ‘round I get a special hood!). There’s something nice about inserting yourself—even for just a few hours—into the centuries-old lineage of academic decorum that is represented in the four-point hat and gown regalia.

So, on this special occasion—after two years of countless stressful days and nights of studying, teaching, reading, and writing—what do I have to say about my experience? Here are a few scatterbrained thoughts:

• Learning never gets old, but college definitely can. After six years of being a college student, I’m ready to take a break. I’m ready to not have homework or mountains of books to read on nights and weekends. I’ll still read books constantly (one should never stop), but I might throw in some fiction or poetry instead of 24/7 theory/history/philosophy.

• Big universities are increasingly run like corporations. Learning is only the means to (and occasional byproduct of) a lucrative economic end. It’s a site of economic bonanza: research funding, technology development, cheap labor, captivated consumer audiences with lots of their parents’ money… And everything is so very expensive!

• Grad students in the humanities almost always regress as writers the longer they stay in grad school. You see, there is this thing called “academic writing” that ruins any inclination one might have for good writing. It requires the usage of meaningless verbs like “problematize,” “privilege,” “complicate,” “destabilize,” and a million words to make rich white protestant men sound legitimately evil (“heteronormativity,” “hegemony,” “patriarchal,” etc). In general, people in grad school (humanities) communicate in ever more abstract language about ever less germane issues.

• Graduate school seems to be more and more about hyperspecialization. There is little interest in broad-based knowledge or cross-discipline intersections anymore. People are encouraged to pick a thing to focus on, to become an “expert” in, and that is that. Connecting to or caring about what others are studying, researching, or writing about is increasingly a rarity (sadly). Everyone does their own thing.

• Lest this all sound super negative, I will say this: my experience in grad school definitely taught me a ton. I gained so much knowledge in such a short amount of time. I feel like my knowledge of film and media (theory, history, criticism, etc) has at least quadrupled in the time I’ve been here, and that will certainly prove valuable to me as a writer and critic.

• Some people ask me if studying film academically (and as a critic) leaves me unable to really enjoy film in the awestruck, child-like sense. In my experience, no it does not. In fact, I can honestly say that I love and appreciate cinema more than ever now—having studied and lived among it in Los Angeles for 2+ years. Also, I have come to appreciate television as an art form way more than I did prior to coming here. In fact, I would say that increasingly I am finding television to be the site of the most interesting and creative output Hollywood has to offer.

Okay, so it may sound like a mixed bag, but I’d truly recommend graduate school to any who might be interested. It’s good for the mind, and challenging (for those who like challenges). It’s also a great place to question things (for those who like questioning), and to discover both the limits and potentials of human inquiry. There were a few moments over the past two years when I felt my mind spinning so hard that I thought I might lose it. Those were great times. Those “teetering on the edge of madness” moments tended to be the most illuminating, and I hope I continue to have them, even as a lay academic.

Thoughts on Holy Week

Growing up, Easter was Cadbury eggs and pastel ties. It was The Ten Commandments on TV. It was hymns like “Low in the Grave He Lay” and “In the Garden.” It was Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. And it was Cadbury eggs.

Luckily I’m older now, and I’m beginning to see the full meaning of this holiday, this ultimate remembrance. And it’s kind of a headtrip.

These events—these shocking historical events about one Jewish prophet’s brutal death and resurrection as recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and others—truly reoriented the trajectory of the world, something even nonbelievers can concede.

But for those of us who believe not just that Jesus Christ was real but that he spoke the truth (for example, that he was the Son of God and the savior of all humanity), the events of Easter did more than change history; they ripped open the fabric of the cosmos. When Jesus rode that donkey triumphantly into Jerusalem and then was systematically butchered less than a week later, he was living the most significant week the world has ever seen.

It’s hard to grasp the magnitude and meaning of this moment—this apex of history. But symbolism has always helped us understand the incomprehensible, and there are some really great symbols in this story.

My favorite has always been the image of the temple veil being ripped completely down the middle at the moment of Christ’s death. Matthew 27: 50-51 records it in this way: “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom...”

Holy #&*$. Can you imagine being in the Temple when this happened? This, after all, was the veil separating God’s house (the Holy of Holies) from where men could go (the rest of the Temple). It was the ultimate symbol of man’s separation from God by sin (Isaiah 59:1-2). Only the High Priest, once a year, could pass through the veil and enter into God's presence for all of Israel, making atonement for their sins (Leviticus 16). The rending of the veil at the moment Christ sacrificed himself, then, gives us some idea of what the cross meant: Christ’s own blood was a sufficient atonement for sins forever. The way into the Holy of Holies was now open and accessible, for all people, for all time, both Jew and gentile. Jesus made God personal.

I’ve been doing a small-group bible study of Luke over the course of Lent, and the theme of our studies has been the various “meals/communions” Jesus had throughout his ministry (dining with Pharisees, the feeding of the five thousand, etc). The last example we are looking at, appropriately for Holy Week, is the Last Supper. Here again we can see the presence of symbolism in Christ explaining the meaning of his impending sacrifice to his followers. Here’s the Luke version (22: 14-20):

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."

After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

What an absolutely bizarre, dumbfounding thing that would have been to witness! I can’t imagine what the disciples were thinking. I mean, what does one do with “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”? The audacity! Thousands of years of Jewish covenantal tradition usurped in a few moments around a dinner table…

Still, within hours the disciples would see all too clearly that Jesus was serious. Sadly, beautifully, graciously: Jesus’s words proved all too literal. He was the new sacrifice: the once, future, and final sacrifice. And it was for everybody.

Here is the truly radical, mind-blowing thing about Easter and what it represents: it means that everyone—even the most despicable, lowly sinners among us—can enter into communion with God. It means that our imperfect notions of worth and value and conditional love are rendered moot and passé. His love (thankfully) has nothing to do with our deserving it. C.S. Lewis clarifies this revolutionary idea when he says, in his essay “Membership”:

"God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is Love. It may be that He loves all equally—He certainly loved all to the death—and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us.”

I can’t admit to fully understanding the mind-blowing mysteries of Easter and all that it means, but I do know this much: we are all invited to the celebration.

March is the Fairest Month

T.S. Eliot once said “April is the cruelest month.” I don’t know about that, but I do know that March is one of the best months there is. We have Spring Break vacations, St. Patrick’s Day, and, most importantly, the NCAA Basketball Tournament. For college basketball fans, March is one big, energy-filled party. It’s madness. And hopefully this year it’ll be Jayhawk madness.

The NCAA tournament is three weeks of raw, “expect the unexpected” amateur athletics at its best. Rankings, hype, politics, bracketology, office pools, endless ads for sucky CBS sitcoms … it all means little during the glorious processional of 64, then 32, 16, 8, and finally four teams giving it all to feel the inexplicable joy of being on top.

What does it mean that so many people go absolutely nuts for this tournament? Congregating around TVs, packing into sweaty auditoriums, cheering on ten players running back and forth throwing a ball around? Why do we schedule our lives—and often our discretionary incomes—around what all of us would probably willingly refer to as “just a game?” Sure, we could write it off as mere entertainment, but that is an empty term in referring to what something “entertaining” actually means in our lives. Why are sports like basketball so attractive as activities to fill our diminishing spare time?

All of our choices of entertainment are, I think, on one level an attempt to escape “everyday life” but also an attempt to reinforce it. It’s an interesting dichotomy actually. Seeing a movie, for example, is obviously “escapism,” but think about the movies you like the best and why… They are the ones that reinforce what you know of the world, of reality, of existence. Not the ones that seem alien or ring false.

Likewise, attending a basketball game is a fun escape and diversion from our everyday lives. But we wouldn’t go—we wouldn’t pay hundreds of dollars for two hours of spectatorship—if mere diversion is all it was. No, I think basketball is so popular, so intensely followed, because it reflects things about our own lives and existence on this planet that we don’t often think about or correlate. I know this sounds extremely convoluted, but follow me here…

Basketball, and all sports, are competitions. That is the first and most basic point of connection with real life. We live lives of competition—in the workplace, in the dating world, in everything we buy or sell, etc… And basketball is one example of a heightened form of competition where the stakes are lower for us but the instincts are still as strong. We resonate with and cheer so hard for our team to win because, quite frankly, fighting to win is what life is all about.

The thrill of victory is worth the price of admission, but what about the agony of defeat? When this is an all-too-ready option in any given sporting event, why do we still attend, game after game? Well, this is where the uniqueness of sport vs. life comes in to play. Losing in sports is tough, don’t get me wrong, but it is part of the game. Losing in life is a lot more unforgiving. Basketball is 50% losing in point of fact (all games everywhere have exactly one winner and one loser), but the heart of the game is in winning. In our real lives we also relate to both winning and losing, but losing seems to get all the attention. Thus, we are attracted to something that focuses our minds and hearts on that still-small reality of life that is within everyone’s grasp—the transcendent glory.

You know the moment in a basketball game when your team is down by a dozen or so points, but makes a run and brings it to within two? And then the crowd rises to its feet, loudly cheering, and the team gets a new bounce in its step, hitting a long three to take the lead? That moment, with the deafening noise and dispirited opponents losing control—is a moment when you can touch the glory, where you glimpse—dare I say it—the divine. You get goosebumps, you slap a stranger’s hand, and you raise your voice to the rafters for the glory to continue.

In these moments I envision God smiling at us humans and thinking, they are feeling it in small doses—the wholeness, purity, redemption, and triumph that is My gift. Unfortunately, many of us leave these sporting “highs” without thinking that maybe they point to something greater that surrounds us. What if sport really is a gift from God? What if the blessings of sport are only a fraction of what is available to us? I think it probably saddens God when the good things in life—sports, natural beauty, art, etc—are cheapened and seen only as ends unto themselves; not as the signposts to a greater grace that exists in the world.

And so we should not cheapen basketball by writing off its “trivial” place in the grand scheme of things. Instead we should realize that the small wonders and momentary blessings matter in life. Why? Because the existence of rays of light implies a vast sun, and if we ever want to comprehend something that vivid, we should start by taking the light in small doses, wherever we can find it.

So amid the frenzied bracketology of this year’s March Madness, don’t expect God to favor one team over another. Because even though 64 teams will leave defeated and only one will carry the trophy, there will still be plenty of “holy moments” to go around. The upsets, the clutch three-pointers, the roar of a crowd brought to their feet by a showy dunk, the nasally exclamation of a Dick Vitale baby!!!… these are the moments that can enliven our weary souls. Fun to watch? You bet. ... And so much more.

Quarterlife Crisis

On December 3 (today) I turn 25. Now normally I steer very clear of these sorts of diary-esque, stereotypically “blog” type entries. I find the whole “publicizing the personal” thing rather annoying, actually. But since it’s my birthday, I’m going to indulge.

So, what are my thoughts on this—my 25th birthday? Well, honestly I’m thinking that I feel old… very old. And not in the “I can’t believe I’m halfway through my twenties” old. I can and do believe that I am actually 25. It’s just that I feel much older than that—like I should be retired now or something. With the rush of the rat race and the grueling pace of my life right now, I suppose the retiree’s leisurely existence sounds like a great alternative.

But this thinking is merely (I hope) a reflection of the mid-twentysomething malaise that most people my age feel: the sentiments of dissatisfaction with jobs, uncertainties about “the future,” apprehensions about whether or not our life trajectories are fitting into our plans (or our family’s hopes, or God’s will, etc).

Or perhaps it is more broadly human than that: the psychological distress that comes with feeling oneself pushing through time unnoticed by most or inconsequential to the overall system. You might call it the Solomon syndrome (the old Solomon from Ecclesiastes, that is), and while it’s not really that productive, it is real.

Aging is a strange thing. It’s something we often think of in terms of Alzheimer’s, Florida, and elderly people in nursing homes and adult diapers. But we are all aging, and we will all one day become the oldest people around.

This is something dealt with beautifully in the new film The Savages, which I recently reviewed for Christianity Today (read it here). In that film—ostensibly about a pair of siblings dealing with a parent with dementia—decay and disintegration are the ubiquitous themes: in the walls, in the plants, in the pets, in our bodies… It’s inescapable, a part of life.

Likewise, growing older and turning 25 is inescapable, a part of life. In reality, “25” is just a word to represent the precise time span that I’ve walked the earth thus far. As an “age” or part of who I am, “25” is much more abstract and arbitrary. Aging and growing are natural processes and universal—but perhaps most importantly, they are things that happen in spite of ourselves. I may not like this feeling of growing older, but what can I do? It’s a reality we have to deal with and make the most of. Perhaps we should even celebrate it. Oh, wait, we already do!

Seriously, though: birthdays are a mixed blessing. Mixed because after age 21 or so, growing older is kind of scary; and a blessing because every year lived is another beautiful gift from God—and a chance to give Him praise and feel His glory.

Football as American Sanctum

Every weekend in America, from August to January, there is a cultural phenomenon that binds millions of us in passionate spectatorship: football. On Friday nights it is high school, Saturday is when the colleges go at it, and then Sunday—the climactic moment in the pigskin orgy—we have wall-to-wall NFL action.

For countless Americans, the Sunday ritual of church in the morning and then NFL all afternoon is one of the most treasured rites of seasonal passage. Sure, there’s a lot to be disgusted by in the whole rigmarole: excessive TV watching is not good, and neither is the emphasis on bad beer, scantily-clad cheerleaders, inflated egos, etc. For these reasons, I often prefer the college football scene—which has some semblance of that “love of the game” fidelity that make movies like Rudy oh-so-moving.

But regardless of its good and bad qualities, football is unquestionably a HUGE part of American culture. I, for one, am smitten, and unashamedly so. But what is it that’s so attractive?

In the September issue of Christianity Today, Eric Miller attacks this question head on in his cover story, “Why We Love Football.” He argues that when we watch football we “see our world far more roundly than we ever see it on CNN. Many of us feel it as fully as we feel it anywhere. The NFL is us.” But what is in football that is a microcosm of real life? Miller thinks there is plenty:

The phenomenon of professional football—with its relentless specialization, its inordinately complex ‘strategic planning,’ its rapid assimilation of new technologies… it’s rhythm of quick bursts and pregnant pauses, its gleaming sensuality of (safe!) violence and sex, its worship of the youthful body, its intense drive for the jolting climax—spits our way of life back on us in neat three-hour packages.

I think this is all true, but I also think there are more rudimentary levels at which our attraction to football is forged. It has to do with our human impulse (highly encouraged in America) to be psychologically preoccupied with competition—with the separation of every human activity into winners and losers, victory and defeat.

Football is the poster-child for competition as product, as commodity. Many sports and games are similar in this way, but football is especially so. It’s a site where people can do (and must do) things totally taboo in the real world: like smashing into each other with all the rage and force one can muster. It’s a place where the consequences for losing are less severe than in our real life battles, and yet the glories of winning are doubly as sweet.

We might think of our everyday human lives as an assemblage of battles and struggles—to make money, to find food, shelter, a mate, etc… Everyday we face the stresses and traumas of battles lost and won. Sometimes we get knocked down and have a hard time getting up. It’s a constant uphill battle, and the consequences are life and death. It’s no wonder we spend so much of our free time invested in sports—where the battles of our everyday lives are condensed, lightened, and made entertaining. Watching sports like football offers us a time to live in a high-intensity game (which we can relate to) without the fear of personal defeat or real-life consequences.

In game theory there is a term called the “magic circle”—the space within which a game takes place, as differentiated from “real life” outside the circle. But why do we enter in to and spend so much of our lives within the artificial sphere or “magic circle” of games? I think it is probably because of the control we have over it via the consciousness which allows us to establish and maintain the circle in the first place. We are the creators of things like football, and we determine the rules—what is or is not allowed. In our real-life struggles we often have no control over the rules—and yet we must still live under and work through them. Games, however, are our created spaces of agency and escape—where we empower ourselves to feel in control, to feel strong and victorious: something in life that is much harder to experience.

Memories of a Recent October

In the world of baseball, October means the World Series. Two Octobers ago, it meant glory for all White Sox fans. Four perfect games paved the way for an event that hadn’t taken place for 88 years. I watched the winning game with my dad, a Chicago native who got glassy-eyed as the victorious final out approached. He was an eleven-year old boy the last time the Southtown had World Series fever. My grandfather went to some of those games in October of 1959, but my dad was too young. I don’t remember any of the excitement; I wasn’t even a thought at that point. I feel it now, though, so many thousands of wins, losses, and lives later.

October is a month of change. Baseball whittles itself down to two teams, trees purge their undesirables, and daylight loses gusto by the hour. It is also a month of rich vitality. Winds whoosh by and blow everything around. Rains come and smell thicker than before. Pumpkins enjoy a fleeting renaissance.

For 3 of the last 4 years, I’ve lived in L.A. during October. Rains come here too, and leaves fall (in some places...in small quantities). The nights grow cold, and the air smells like citrus harvest and salt spray.

Today I woke up to the sound of garbage trucks. I remember October mornings of a not-so-distant past, when I’d let the still-warm sun wake me, along with the noise of my mother blowing leaves around in the backyard. Home is a season, and changes with rapid mood-shifts.

Where are the days of childhood, when Halloween costumes, high school football games, and pumpkin carving kept me awake at night? Who knew that change was more than a season of falling temperatures and earth tones? It is life.

Soon it will be November; October a fading thought. A new set of fans will rejoice in their team’s victory (think positive, Cubs fans), just as I did when the Sox won two years ago. My dad cried in ecstasy on that Wednesday night—the fourth straight win against Houston, sweeping the opponent to clinch the title. Chicago cheered. Ticker tape flew. The rapturous moment had come; one that, as my dad repeated through tears, “I never thought I’d live to see!”

But we do live to see such moments. We live for them. Sports offer plenty: moments of heavenly triumph where, for some reason, we rally together and see the glory. All of life is a push for these rarities. We have lost so much, and we feel it. When we gain, or nearly achieve, that immeasurable oneness and warmth, we forget our lot for a moment. But these are fleeting moments, and after and even during these beautiful exaltations of life, we see the pain coming back and back.

Impermanence. Time. Memory. Past.

Oh holy God: as the leaves fall outside my window, as the footballs begin to throw in earnest, as my life becomes broader and weightier with age… I see your glory. It peeks through the clouds and shines through the burnt oranges and pear yellows, and flickers out through the flashbulbs of light as a cracked bat signals one more team for the ages.

Autumnal Art: 20 Tastes

Autumn is my favorite season. Always has been. Sadly, I now live in a climate (southern California) that has only the faintest glimpse of any seasonal changes. Fall in L.A. means the Emmys, a new television season, and USC football. Weatherwise, it might mean a freak thunderstorm and a few random trees changing color. But it is not Autumn in the beautiful Midwestern sense of the word. The Autumn I know is full of indelible sights, smells, and memories. It is football games in crisp October nights. It is pumpkin patches and hayrides and the smell of wheat harvest and burning leaves. It is wicked cold fronts that bring thunder and sometimes snow, with gusty winds that reduce summer plumage to naked boney limbs. It is hot spice punch, pumpkin pie, fireplace embers, dark nights at the state fair, cold mornings at the bus stop, and toasted salty pumpkin seeds.

In honor of this wonderful season, so happily melancholy in its spirit of change and decay, I’ve decided to experience it vicariously by listing 20 of the best embodiments of autumn in art and literature.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (book) by Washington Irving Nothing says autumn like Halloween, and no Halloween is complete without this creepy New England goth tale by Washington Irving. The film version by Tim Burton is kinda ridiculous (albeit fun), but the book is a gorgeous autumnal horror story wherein a headless horseman stalks innocent rural villagers with pumpkins! I’ll always associate fall with the crisp, slightly haunted woods of Sleepy Hollow.

Late Autumn (film) This film by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu is less about the physical manifestations of the season as it is about the spiritual essence of Autumn as it relates to our own life-cycles (i.e. growing up, moving on, breaking away from the past). A beautiful and profound meditation on impermanence.

Autumn Landscape (painting), Van Gogh

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (classic TV special) I watched this classic Halloween special (which debuted in 1966) every year growing up. What can I say? It’s one of the best animated holiday specials ever. American Halloweens and Autumns have definitely been immortalized (and shaped) by this moment in classic pop culture.

Ohio (album), Over the Rhine I’m inclined to call this the best album of all time (period.), but for now I’ll just say it’s the best album for Autumn. Over the Rhine’s double disc opus has the heart of a Midwestern folk journey through the apple valleys of Michigan to the wheatfields of Iowa, and of course the meandering backroads of Ohio. It’s all so very pastoral, and yet unsettled—like the low pressure air before a Canadian cold front brings the first snow.

Cold Mountain (book) by Charles Frazier I’m not sure why this novel feels so quintessentially Autumn-like to me… maybe it’s because seasons and the changing of them are so central to the mood of the book. And harvesting crops on the farm, getting hands dirty, preparing the homestead for winter in the Blue Ridge mountains… All of it evokes the smoky evanescence of this beautiful time of the year.

Autumn Morning (painting), Atkinson Grimshaw

All the Real Girls (film) This wonderful film by director David Gordon Green embodies Autumn both visually (the film’s color palette is orange, red, brown, and yellow) and thematically. It’s a story about the end of a young romance (like a summer fling), the pains of growing up, and the essential place of decay and renewal in the cycles of life.

“Autumn Day” (poem), Rilke I’ll just quote it:

Lord: it is time. The summer was so immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials, and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full, give them another two more southerly days, press them to ripeness, and chase the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore. Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time, will stay up, read, write long letters, and wander the avenues, up and down, restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Hoosiers (film) Football movies are the logical choice for films about fall, but Hoosiers is a basketball film that I’ve always associated with Autumn. Maybe it’s the wonderful scene with Gene Hackman and Barbara Hershey working together in the cold Indiana field at harvest time (you can almost smell that “burning grass/leaves on the plains” smell), or maybe it’s just that fall means the onset of basketball season for those of us with perennial high hopes.

Sea Change (album), Beck This is the ultimate break-up album, but even if you’ve never gone through a painful transition in love, you’ve surely gone through several in life. We all face sea changes, and it’s hard. Beck captures the moods and melodies of a swiftly changing, turbulent world—and it feels like a perfect companion to a cold November day when wind and ice and falling leaves swirl around outside.

Autumn on the Hudson (painting), Cropsey

“September Song” and “September Baby” (songs), Willie Nelson and Joseph Arthur, respectively Two songs about the month when summer fades and time claims its memories. From Willie: Oh it's a long long while from May to December / But the days grow short when you reach September. And from Joseph Arthur: You can feel the falling leaves / Filling up our vacant lives.

Sounds of Silence (album), Simon & Garfunkel A lovely soundtrack to Autumn. From the first haunting lines of the album (Hello Darkness my old friend…) to the mediation of time that is “Leaves That Are Green” (Time hurries on / And the leaves that are green turn to brown / And they wither with the wind / And they crumble in your hand) everyone can relate to this 1966 classic.

Days of Heaven (film) Yes, this is a film by Terrence Malick (who most of you know, is my favorite filmmaker). But its inclusion on this list is solely on the merits of it being a great film about fall—specifically, harvest. The photography in this film—the yellow hues and burnt browns of ripe wheat and husking farmers—is simply stunning.

( ) (album), Sigur Ros This album may be about the fire and ice of Bjork’s homeland (Iceland), but its beauty transcends specificity—evoking the more general majesty that is our dynamic, tumultuous planet.

Autumn Moon (photograph), Ansel Adams

The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place (album), Explosions in the Sky In Autumn, one might be inclined to say that the earth IS a cold dead place, but this is of course absurd since we all know that Spring will come eventually. Fall is a season of transition—and its death is always haunted by new life. Explosions in the Sky capture the raucous dynamics of an earth that is very much alive, even in its most subdued moments.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (album), Wilco This landmark album from Chicago band Wilco is the ultimate musical embodiment of disintegration. The album tows the line between pristine pop melodies and discordant noisemaking, before eventually descending into an all out breakdown. It’s an album about beauty being changed into something less harmonious, but ultimately just as beautiful.

Friday Night Lights (film and television show) Both the film and television series (and book, I suppose) are about much more than football. They are mediations on life and its changing seasons—and about the unquenchable desire to live in the proverbial “golden days.” Every time I watch the film I think back to when I was a kid, attending Friday night football games in Jenks, Oklahoma, with the lights and hotdogs and marching bands and crisp autumn air blowing over from the sandy banks of the Arkansas River.