Autumn is the season of spice and cider, amber hues, crinkling leaves, the oddly invigorating aroma of rot, early sunsets, apples, homecomings and reunions, football, The Big Chill and When Harry Met Sally. Most of all, autumn is the season of nostalgia.
To tell the truth, I never consciously linked autumn to yearning and melancholy until this year. The only yearning I’ve felt is for autumn, for a respite from the dog days of summer. And instead of melancholy, those smells of the natural world decomposing and the colors of a soft, earthly palette produce a contentment deep in the gut. The relationship between autumn and nostalgia is apparent, though. The year is drawing to a close. Leaves and grass and flora are withering. Temperatures are spiraling down. There is a sense of finality for whose suddenness we are ill-prepared, so we cling to the only thing that seems safe: the past.
It’s no secret that I spend a good deal of time considering nostalgia (hint: see the name of this newsletter). In an effort to understand it, I have slowly been making my way through Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia. Slowly because I’ve been approaching it with hesitation. In my mind, I’ve bloated the book to a biblical status. A repository of answers, cures for my time-related malaise. I am afraid to discover that that is not the case at all. That I will be left with more questions than resolutions. Worse still, I’m worried that Boym’s book does offer panaceas but that they’ll be unsuitable for my circumstances. Don’t let’s get dour (“don’t let’s” is an outmoded locution; I’ve encountered it in books of the 19th and 20th centuries and for some reason, I’m delighted by its apparent chunkiness). There’s no time for getting stuck in the mire of melancholy. Quite literally, we are running out of time (if you subscribe to the linear interpretation of existence). So far, I don’t feel any better or worse about my nostalgic condition in light of Boym’s historical anecdotes. Stasis can be just as rewarding as change.
Let’s make one thing clear: I love autumn. October and November are my favorite months of the year. Any nostalgia associated with them refers only to an anticipatory nostalgia (see panel three in the picture below). Autumn should be about rejoicing. Relishing the sensory excitement of an evolving environment, sitting beside the hearth of a crackling fireplace, biting into an apple just yanked from the branch. And how can we forget the gluttonous performance of Thanksgiving dinner?
I don’t have a quintessentially autumn-flavored song for you. What I have is a song that makes me feel nostalgic, and maybe you’ll find that it does the same for you: “Twelve Thirty” by The Mamas & The Papas.
Like Boym argues, nostalgia can be either positive or negative. While memories can rejuvenate us and transport us to the unadulterated joy of youth, they can also incapacitate us, fill us with anxiety and dread. “Twelve Thirty” is less about indulging nostalgia and more about shirking it in favor of the present. The song begins in the past tense: “I used to live in New York City/Everything there was dark and dirty.” There is no fondness in these reminiscences. “A clock that always said twelve-thirty.” Trapped in a Groundhog Day—that’s how an unwanted nostalgia can paralyze you. Once we traipse into the chorus, we recognize the ecstasy associated with having left that place and returned to a true home. The canyon—Laurel Canyon—constitutes an escape. From the grime and rut of New York, from a fraught history. In California, everyone is friendly, everything is beautiful.
I’m grasping at straws, I know. If anything, “Twelve Thirty” is anti-nostalgic. Or, it’s a fulfillment of homecoming: The Mamas & The Papas’ stint in New York crippled them with pining for their native land of Los Angeles; instead of succumbing to nostalgia (which implies an irretrievable state), they negate it by returning home.
But “Twelve Thirty” just sounds nostalgic, doesn’t it? The softness of the instruments—the muted cymbals, the caressed keys of the piano—is somber. Even as everything crescendoes towards the chorus, there is a persistent feeling of something lost. The vocals are drawn out. They linger in the air, waiting and longing for what is no longer there, and perhaps never was. Cass Elliot’s alto is both soothing and penetrating. The harmonies achieved by this quartet are mesmerizing. They surround you, envelop and levitate your soul. Perhaps someone can enlighten me, but I haven’t heard a group or an artist that echoes The Mamas & The Papas’ sound. Here’s what Michelle Phillips, the sole surviving member, has to say about the group’s inception in 1965:
It was that night that Cass came over and we all took the acid. I think she was the one who brought The Beatles album [Rubber Soul] with her. That was the first time that we had actually really sat down and listened to the Beatles. Denny kept saying, “That’s what we have to do. They’re the kind of songs you have to write, John. Enough of me and my uncle and make me a pallet on the floor.” Denny was the one who really changed the direction of our sound.
The word I use to describe “Twelve Thirty,” and most of the band’s songs, is “chill.” It’s the kind of music you can tune into on the radio or pop on the record player and just sit there and listen. Lie down on the rug, stare into the ceiling, let your mind wander. This is a sublime sensation. So much so that I created a playlist just to emulate the aura: chill 60s, which also happens to be my most nostalgic collection. It’s a well-curated mix (yes, I’m boasting) of mellow, tender songs that serves as the perfect soundtrack for when you’re traveling those winding roads, the window cracked to allow in a sliver of stinging air, the dull, coarse barks of trees cocooning you in their cold.
I’ve gotten to the end of this piece and realized that “Look Through My Window” (the first track on my chill 60s playlist, ironically) would have been the better, the more fitting choice. It is an obvious homage to longing and to the unrecoverable. Alas, I am here, at the finish, and it is too late. Absolutely, unequivocally impossible to abandon “Twelve Thirty” and rewrite this piece. You’re stuck with the result of my obliviousness and my obstinacy. Maybe, when the dreadful months of January and February plod around, you’ll remember this instance of could-have-been. You can, actually, be nostalgic for what never existed. In an elegant, full-circle moment, you will listen to “Twelve Thirty,” which will stoke your nostalgia for “Look Through My Window.” And that’s how it’s done.
Love this—-and Autumn too!