Hamilton Leithauser Sings My Autumn Heart

Her room was always a light tan color. I think they call it taupe. Whatever the fuck it was called, you could see it light up when the sun would rise and cast it's warmth throughout the room. The rays would always be carved up by the dark tree limbs and dying leaves. I climbed that tree and took a sepia picture. Sepia makes things look more "important" or "nostalgic" I suppose. Sepia...that's what color her room was, I guess. Or it seems that way in my memory.

Sentimentality has always been a bane in my psyche like a double-edged, razor-sharp sword; because while it adorns your spirit with warm memories that shudder your soul, it's found itself to be quite adept at poisoning and folding and turning you inside out when the whole damn ship sinks. Plus, I have a photographic memory and a phonographic memory. I can remember anything. I usually do. I envy those who forget.

You can always tell when Fall arrives. Everything goes orange. The sun...the sun on the towering buildings downtown are painted orange. They don't host that bright yellow Summer sun anymore, or wear it like a uniform of freedom...they relax and take on a more somber stance like they're awaiting something; almost like they're putting on a sweater to weather the coming days. They squint their eyes and acknowledge the passing of yet another season in the many seasons that find them standing tall watching over us as we pass. Passing along, and eventually passing away.

The days stretch their arms and legs and yawn at the daylight much earlier than they did in the scorching halftime show of Summer. Your bones can detect the air surrounding them dropping in centigrade and you feel Autumn's approach in your solar plexus. Your lips dry out and your skin fledges it's new layers, much lighter than that which you worked so hard on during Summer's solstice. The Autumn envelopes itself around you and cools you down in a slow step process, bringing your body's core to it's new destination...it's new season.

She would always wake up and start the coffee-maker if we were still detoxifying from the mass amounts of pain killers and alcohol and madness we ingested during the night before; descending into some mysterious place scattered between Heaven and Hell where bad was good and good was evil and evil was exciting and excitement was purity. If it was a work night, she'd grab a Red Bull for a quick inoculation of combustible fuel to ignite her brain activity and her movements because she was usually late. So was I. I'd call in and walk outside into the cool morning while drinking my coffee and stare at that tree; pondering where I was, who I was with, why I had never felt this way before, if I would ever feel this way again, and how I could possibly imagine myself (or strategize) getting through all of it constructively, without complete and utter breakdown or notions of suicide, when she left and it was over.

Fall would have arrived for the 5th time since that one. The soundtrack to many of those moments I played today on a day much like all those other cold Autumn days. As soon as I walked out of the door, the song hit my head like the cold hit my skin, sending chills to my insides that had been previously warmed in a bed and hot shower before readying myself for the day. Because I've been there before, the jukebox in my mind firespins that song when it's surrounded by that first Autumn cold. Late to work again, I dug through the CD case and pulled out the solidly scratched CD that we listened to over and over again on her bed with the windows open, letting the first breezes of the Autumn cool roll through her bedroom and blow the thin curtains to either side; and blow our minds wide open to real possibilities. Saying nothing. Just listening. But the insecurities and paranoia couldn't be blown away. They only sat there with us enjoying the comfortable temperature. They'd stick with us till the bitter end and eventually become our bitter end.

Bows and Arrows. Loud and jangly. Lot's of treble. Vintage guitars and shoddy strings emanating from the stand-up piano into the lo-fi production microphones. A staccato bass and drum heads that need to be tightened. There's a slightly out-of-tune harpsichord, and chaotic melodies of pained regret and optimistic surrender. I remember the way it felt, I remember what it meant, and I remember how it sounded. I still do. I did today. And I'm embarrassed.