I am a summer morning person. I know that is something people do not often admit because summer mornings have a certain reputation for being idyllic, all birdsong and warm golden light and open windows. And they are. They are perfectly nice. But they do not do for me what a fall morning does. A fall morning is a different thing entirely. A fall morning is the reason I wrote an entire album about this season.
Let me tell you about my favorite kind of morning.
It starts before I am fully awake, with the window cracked from the night before and the air coming through it at a temperature that makes the blanket feel deliberate and good. That specific experience, the cool air from the window meeting the warmth of the bed, is one of the small sensory pleasures I look forward to all year. I am not being dramatic when I say that this exact moment is worth anticipating from July. The cracked fall window is one of the great simple joys of being alive.
I get up and the first thing I do is not look at my phone. This is a practice I have been working on for a couple of years and fall makes it easier because there is already something better to look at. The light outside in fall is different from any other season. Lower, more golden, arriving later and already carrying color with it. I try to see it before I see a screen, to let October have the first claim on my attention rather than the internet.
Then coffee. Always coffee. And in September and October the coffee means something particular because the seasonal menus are back and the whole ritual of fall drinking is underway. I wrote a song about this called First PSL on my new album Give Me Fall, and while I have some dignity and am not exclusively a pumpkin spice person, I will tell you that the first pumpkin spice latte of the season is a genuine event in my life that I take seriously. Sometimes it is a home version with a syrup I bought at the craft store. Sometimes it is the real thing from the drive-through. Either way it is October in a cup and I love it without apology.
I take my coffee to the porch or the closest window and I spend a few minutes doing nothing. Not productive nothing, not scrolling nothing, just sitting nothing. Watching the leaves. Noticing what has changed overnight. Seeing whether any new colors have arrived since yesterday. Fall moves fast and if you are not watching you will miss the peak and only realize it after the fact, when the trees are already bare and you are standing there thinking wait, when did that happen.
This is also when I do my best thinking about music. The early fall morning is when songs come to me most naturally. Something about the quiet and the particular quality of the light and the permission the season gives to slow down and feel things. A lot of the songs on Give Me Fall started as early morning thoughts on a porch or beside a window before the day started asking things of me.
I will also say, because I cannot help myself, that there is something coming later this year that I have been working on during these early mornings that I think you are going to love. A project rooted in the winter season, in tradition and storytelling and the particular magic of the coldest and most beautiful time of year. I am not ready to share all the details yet but I am working on it in the early mornings and it is making me very happy. Join my email list here to be the first to know.
Tell me in the comments: what does your fall morning routine look like? Are you a slow morning person or a get-going person? And what is the one fall morning thing you look forward to most? I want all of it.
Give Me Fall is streaming now on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. Please follow me so every new release finds you. Come hang out on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Here is to crisp mornings and slow coffee and the window cracked just enough.
Warmly, Melanie Grace
