(If you’d like to listen along, you can click on the Article Voiceover above.)
While August is pretty up there on the feels meter, September somehow comes in even a bit heavier. Honestly, I kinda love both months for it. They’re like “Yeah we’re sappy and we sure as hell are going to make you feel weird. We’re about endings and also beginnings and kinda wear two seasons at once, so get your cry on, and then buckle up buttercup, deal with it. We’re taking your ass back to school. We’re taking you all the way back.”
My best friend, A, and I were recently texting about how we spent September in tears as kids. Couldn’t part ways with our childhood summer days. Couldn’t kiss our hours at the lake goodbye. Couldn’t say goodbye. To anything. Still can’t.
My last essay was about pruning and I’m still obsessing over that word/idea currently. Earlier in the month there was a new moon in Virgo. According to the one astrologist I keep up with, Chani Nicholas, the theme of that new moon, was focus and getting at what’s essential in our lives. In other words, pruning. So we can produce fruit. I can’t think of another time of year that embodies pruning quite like late August/early September. This sliver in time pinches us back. Both in a modern sense of schedules and routines. And in an ancient sense of nature and ritual.
Sometimes, while in a personal pruning phase, I gotta go all the way in, let those ripples ride the whole way through until they reach the shore. Music helps. Throwback music really helps. This September, I’ve been drawn in a musical direction I wasn’t expecting. How did this happen? Well you see, I’m a pretty big fan of Maggie Rogers (you probably remember me mentioning that in a previous essay). Just so happens that Mags spent the summer touring in Europe with good old Coldplay.
I thought it was really sweet she was spending her summer that way. And then I remembered I actually really loved their music in my teens/early 20s. The early 2000s tunes. The old ones. I feel like a curmudgeon—if you can be a curmudgeon at 32—for saying I like the old stuff, but here we are, it’s true.
Hear me out. Before there was Viva La Vida and Hymn for the Weekend, and whatever other ten party hits I’ve missed since I stopped keeping up, there was Yellow, The Scientist, freaking CLOCKS. I get it. Clocks was overplayed. So what. Tell me that the opening keys in Clocks (even though the radio killed it) doesn’t have you wanting to sprint to the next plane and change your life. Just me? Fine, I blame those keys for being the reason that the meaning of life was found only in window seats in my 20s.
Tell me you don’t want to drive through the pouring rain or be sitting in a coffee shop in the pouring rain and let your eyes pour rain while listening to Fix You or Sparks. And I suppose now is a good time to mention that Sky Full of Stars (yes that was a newer poppier/dancier one, sue me) was mine and my best friend’s anthem when we traveled through Europe when we were 22. That’s not true. It was my anthem that summer and I’m pretty sure that song still makes her nauseous due to me overplaying it in every room we stayed in. (It was at a time when having whole albums and playlists downloaded on your phone was still pretty new. Sky Full of Stars made the cut and did the job. For me at least.)
Maybe it’s certain words— yellow, opportunity, stupid, tangled, stars—sung in a British accent that made my young self’s small town head and heart explode. Maybe it still makes my head and heart explode and the fact that it does is something that’s a bit embarrassing and hilarious but also connected to a deep well inside of me that always told me to run, to end, to start, to sever, to prune. I think I loved their old stuff, and still do, because the melancholy sound was a way to feel before I had discovered I could write beyond a school paper. Before poetry, I turned to sappy tunes. Now I have both! Dripping in sap.
My fella prefers the jam band variety of rock. He calls music like Coldplay’s—Dad Rock (or if we’re being inclusive, Parent Rock, because women like them too.) I’m OK with that. Turns out I don’t often need a twenty minute jam to transcend. I’m usually good with a solid chorus to count on, keys that crush into memory, and a bridge that I know will break me every time. What can I say, although many of my friends and a whole lot of people on the internet find them rather “beige” and nothing more than “midlife mortgage rock” (« this whole reddit thread sent me into a fit of laughter and I hope it does for you too by the way), I lose my mind when I hear the opening guitar knowing the chorus just around the corner living inside of Warning Sign.
My first time wine tasting, one of my friends who is a somm told me “Taste is personal” and I think about it all the time when tasting or listening or watching art. While some will find a set of vocals or a band’s overall sound to be nails on a chalkboard, others need it to access their early 2000s self. I suppose this is where I come outta the closet as needing some of the polarizing lead singing indie-rock-gone-pop-gone-electronic-gone-I don’t know what now— Chris Martin. Taste is personal. And maybe that’s because so is the past. Old angst dies hard.
This essay isn’t really about Coldplay, it’s more about what they, and other bands, movies, meals, represent for all of us. A return. A re-run. Some old heartbreak, haunts, and hallelujah of our youth on repeat. A thread of September present unraveling us all the way until we tumble into a tangle of September past. The whole damn nostalgia sweater we’ve been wearing since youth comes undone.
September casts its line, sinks in deep, hooks all the past ninth months of the year that still live beneath our skin. We’ve no choice. It draws us in, pulls us under, begs us to break some habits so we can build new ones. This time of year feels annoyingly and satisfyingly necessary.
I suspect after this brief journey of re-visiting my favorite Coldplay tracks (because trust me, the new ones are too upbeat and dancy for September), I’ll be returning to the latest-on-the-scene-sadboy, Noah Kahan, who has an entire album dedicated to the time of year when trees become leafless. And then I’ll surely be spending time with the ladies that I’ve been leaning on in autumn for several years now— Flo (Florence and the Machine), AURORA, Adele, Lana (del Rey) and sue me again, Taylor’s Folklore album sprinkled in. Oh, and the Civil Wars. Happy Civil Wars season to those who observe. (What happened to those two by the way? Every year this time of year I always end up doing a little internet sleuthing on them but it always feels inconclusive.)
In October, Coldplay is dropping a new album called Moon Music. Though I’m obviously intrigued given the album name, I’m holding that new one very loosely. In November, I’ll be seeing Maggie Rogers in real life, on stage, after a summer of opening for them. Until then, you can catch me pruning the best I can. Revisiting past selves that always seem to haunt as well as keep me company in September. Paring down is not always popular. For me it often goes hand in hand with hermitting. Going back to the start can be controversial. But as one of my writing teachers, Joy, says, “if your art doesn’t trouble the waters, maybe it’s not done yet”.
I’d love to know what tunes you’re listening to this month as you prune, pare back, pull on your heartstrings. The more cringey the better. Let me know in the comments or if you know me in real life send me a text, and let me know what you’re listening to.
Dripping in sap ❤️❤️❤️
“The whole damn nostalgia sweater we’ve been wearing since youth comes undone.” ❤️🙌