How to Disappear Completely

Fall is my favorite season, and Halloween is my favorite holiday.

I was born November 2nd, and it feels purposeful. I came to be in the season that best describes me.

Memento moris everywhere- in the leaves and animals and cold air. 

What becomes status quo seems almost like small birthday gifts with me in mind: scary movies, layered clothing, beanies, hot tea.

And “something about grungy music in the fall time,” my friend Emmy texted me.

I love it. And so I drive out to the pumpkin patch with my friends. We buy the apple cider and donuts, we plan our jack-o-lanterns and listen to record players.

If summer is mania and laughter and indulgence, fall is introspection and quiet. I watch the sun set sooner by the day. I bring my plants indoors.

In my brain, fall is my favorite season.

But my brain still has a tough time with it.

It’s around this time that I want to sleep more. I want to slow down- to be a bear in my cave.

Brain usually gets sad. It used to alarm me, but it’s just the way it goes now. Things turn brown, and my head feels dull.

I was hanging out with my friends Sarah and Zak the other day. The tradition goes: I babysit on occasion, and they make me dinner often. A perfect trade.

This was a post-dinner conversation.

“Imagine being a spirit,” I said. “You can just phase through a wall if you’re tired of the conversation. And what can they do? Nothing. Also you could fly around and observe. No body, no outside expectations, no perception.”

We proceeded to joke about the conversations we’d choose to phase out of. There was an impressive variety.

So profound. That would be awesome. 

To be a bear in a cave, to be a spirit.

I sadly don’t have the ability to shape shift. 

So the dilemma becomes: how does one deal with fall-time dull brain without morphing into an animal or a poltergeist?

It sounds laughable that way, I guess. My attempt to make it lighthearted.

But more candidly: what do you do when you can feel the seasonal depression encroaching with the New England fog?

It manifests in weird ways.

The other day, someone ripped my basil plant out of its pot. And then they stole the pot.

This is what prompted me to move the plants indoors, actually. Not the cold. So I guess I lied earlier.

And if I was a wittier writer, maybe I’d turn this into a funny bit.

But too bad. I cried about it. Because I worked hard on that plant, and that was my pot.

And now I’m the weird woman who cries over her basil in October.

In defense of myself- it was an herbaceous cherry on top of the hardest week I’d had in awhile. But pretty absurd on the surface, huh?

So in an effort not to be the type of sad set off by stolen pots, I’ve formed a game plan for my psyche.

I’ve decided that the only way out of this is through.

So I inhale, I consume art.

I exhale, I create it.

My only cure-all. 

When you’re on the verge of hibernation, creating art takes too much effort. Everything does, really.

So I decided to work on experiencing others’. Music is a very easy medium to take in.

And I find it beautiful how a series of sound waves can perfectly encapsulate the way you feel in the present. You get to curate what makes you feel seen as you are. 

Have you heard “How to Disappear Completely” by Radiohead?

If you take one thing from this blog, please let it be that song. 

Released as part of album Kid A in 2000, (October 2nd. One month before Amanda Mona) this is the song frontman Thom Yorke wants to be remembered for. He says “it’s the most beautiful thing we’ve ever done.”

The music takes you along a tidal wave, building and crashing. Layers of color over a deadened grey backsplash.

Thom wrote this one in the middle of the OK Computer tour, the largest tour the band had performed to date. He was overwhelmed and numb, and wasn’t even halfway through it yet.

Orchestra swells as he sings “I’m not here / this isn’t happening,” a phrase given to him by Michael Stipe of R.E.M., and the instrumentals overtake his vocals like a storm. It feels like he’s drowning, and in the backseat of something bigger than him. No choice but to tell himself he’s somewhere else.

It’s striking the way How to Disappear Completely throws the listener into the eye of the hurricane with Thom. The lyrics spiral, but the chord progressions eventually begin to resolve in a way that feels like a tiny light at the end of the tunnel.

I find that the people I trust most with this promise of hope are the ones who have been in the depths of its opposite.

I know I’m not on a world tour. But hearing one of my favorite artists express their brain in a way that aligns with mine feels a little less lonely. A bit of a “welcome to the pit. I see you.”

Gives me faith that there’s always something after fall. 

So I’ll sleep a bit more than usual. I’ll water my newly revived basil.

And I guess I won’t be a spirit, but I’ll listen to Radiohead sing about how to be like one.

Inhale, exhale.

Something about grungy music in the fall time.