Can we talk about September for a minute? Because September is almost over and I have complicated feelings about that.
On one hand, October is coming and October is the fullest expression of everything fall is. The color peaks in October. The best hay rides and pumpkin patches and corn maze days are in October. The fireplaces start in October. The good Starbucks drinks are fully in rotation in October. October is fall at its most October, which is to say fall at its most itself, which is to say the best month of the year by a significant margin. I am genuinely excited for October.
On the other hand, September. Beautiful, transitional, quietly incredible September. I am not ready to let it go.
September was the month this year when Give Me Fall came out into the world. That fact alone makes it a significant September for me personally. I have been making music for years and I have released a lot of projects, but this one felt different from the moment I started writing it. It felt like the most complete expression of who I am as an artist and what I love as a human being. Fourteen songs about the season I have been waiting for all year. And September was the month it finally got to exist.
I wrote about September in a song on the album called September Starts, which opens with this image: a chill in the air that wasn’t there last week. That is September. That is the essence of it. One morning everything is still summer and the next morning there is a chill that wasn’t there before, and something in you recognizes it before you can name it. September is the month the air begins to change.
September is also the month people seem to come back to themselves. I wrote about this in a blog post earlier this month, the way September feels like a second New Year, the way the return of routine and rhythm and cooler air and the smell of something different gives people a feeling of renewal that January tries to offer and never quite delivers in the same way. I see it in the faces of people I pass in September. Something has settled. Something has arrived. The summer is behind them and they are glad.
I am glad too. I am so glad. And a little wistful, the way you are always a little wistful about something beautiful that is almost over.
But October is right there. And I have promised myself I am going to be fully inside it. No rushing toward what comes next, no thinking about the album I am making for winter, which I did mention is coming and is called A Folklore Christmas and is going to be something really special rooted in the old stories and folklore and Celtic tradition of the winter season. I am going to let October be October. I am going to be present to every leaf and every golden hour and every firepit night and every last dinner outside that I do not know is the last one until it is already over.
That is the whole lesson of this album and of this season. You cannot hold onto it. But you can be awake inside it. You can choose, every single day, to pay attention to the beautiful life that is happening right in front of you.
Thank you for spending September with me. Thank you for listening to Give Me Fall and for streaming and sharing and commenting and showing up. You make this whole creative life feel like the thing it was always meant to be.
October tomorrow. Let’s go.
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Tell me in the comments: what was your favorite September moment this year? What are you most looking forward to in October? I want to hear all of it.
See you in October, friends.
Warmly, Melanie Grace