October is a magical thirty-one days that begins with cobalt skies and football games then ends with bonfires and candy corn. Flanneled and coffeed, I spend more time outside during this month than I do during the oppressively humid summer. Air is more breathable, the sun shines clearer, and all things are more pumpkin-spiced.
I have held a tradition for the past five Octobers. I listen to Bon Iver’s album “For Emma, Forever Ago” whenever I am in my car or studying. My constant autumnal companion, the forty-minute album was written in solitude by a man during a month-long stint in a Wisconsin cabin and is about breaking up with the titular Emma. Acoustic-driven and hauntingly sparse, “For Emma, Forever Ago” mirrors October’s air of change, a shift from summer dalliances to winter isolation and that gloriously blue moment between the two. At this point, I have the album memorized, but it is still a ubiquitous feature to all of my Octobers.
Despite my five-year relationship with “For Emma,” it sounds different to me with each listen. It literally sounds different because the blank CD Walt burned for me in ninth grade now skips and flits from bridge to chorus and back. However, the album also has a different feel. This year, it has sounded less melancholic to me and I’ve interpreted its stripped back production as a means of honest story-telling as opposed to a plea for pity from the spurned lover who wrote the album. Whether or not this means I’m happier than I was last year, I’m not sure, but I think it sounds different because we coerce literature into meeting us where we want it to meet us. We learned at the beginning of the semester that anything you can read is literature, so I’d consider “For Emma “ to be literature because its lyrics are just that, lyrical poetry that’s spiced up with an acoustic guitar and some simple chords. My listening of “For Emma” this year is different than last year’s because I want to hear an honest story, not some over-emotionalized break-up song.
I felt similarly when we read Huck Finn in class. I’d read the book in sophomore English and loved it, but I had different feelings about it when I reread it for Lit and Civ. I originally admired the novel for its readability and its groundbreaking treatment of race. I didn’t have as great of an experience reading the novel this time, and I think it has to do with this October’s reading of “For Emma.” I was on board, pun intended, with Huck Finn up until the last one-third of it when Tom Freaking Sawyer had to show up and soliloquize for forty pages about prison escapes and witches and snakes. Huck is one of American literature’s greatest narrators because he doesn’t know how to be anything but honest. In contrast, Tom has a knack for deception and panache. “Tom’s” section of the novel undermines the other two-third’s earnestness by subjecting Jim to humiliating designs that only benefit Tom. The ending bothered me this semester while I had read it as a comedic break from the rest of the novel during my first reading.
My readings of both pieces are different because I’m making literature speak to my current situation, which is not the same as it was last year or when I was a high school sophomore. Maybe I crave an honest story because I am tired of lies. Maybe I’m tired of symbolism and motifs. Or maybe I’m just happy it’s October and won’t let even the mopiest of indie albums get me down.
[Boost your hipster cred and listen to the whole album on repeat with this link. Well maybe not on repeat because that would probably get old. But, hey, we’re all getting older so listen to it. #mustache #pumpkinspice #basic #flannel #boots #bonfires #toocoolforyou #justkidding #yourecooltoo]
nick barnette 