Resource Roundup #51
For the week of October 7th.
Well, folks, we’ve reached October. This is my personal favorite month of the year, with November as a close second. Years ago, I was driving one October morning across the marsh on my way into downtown Charleston and I remember looking up and out at the way the light struck the grass and the water and Ceremony by New Order was playing on the radio and I was convinced, in that moment, that everything would be alright. Even now, nearly a decade later, I still look at the way the light hits the trees right when they’re breaking golden and feel that way.
I’m not alone in loving October, nor in this feeling— in one of my favorite poems, Leaves, Lloyd Swartz reflects on a similar experience. This is a month proving it lives. It lives, it lives, and so do I:
In another one of my favorite poems, October, Mary Oliver speaks to the two oppositions of my truest thoughts: Look, I want to love this world / as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get / to be alive / and know it, she writes, and then contrasts it with: so this is the world. / I’m not in it. / It is beautiful.
Haven’t we all felt all of these things all at once? I’m realizing now that I said my two favorite months are October and November, but it’s really just Scorpio season that I love the most, which checks out (I’m a Scorpio moon). It’s something about the world waking up, turning beautiful, and then leaving it all behind— proof that even the most beautiful things don’t last, and that’s OK. We will bloom again. The beauty will return. But this time, when I re-enter the world, I want to be in it. I want to live, to be alive and know it.
Art allows for that. So does community. And so too do the leaves, the light, and the right backroad on the right morning. There is beauty anywhere you are willing to look for it.
Now, onwards into what you should check out this weekend.
I would be remiss if I didn’t begin this newsletter by talking about Loretta Lynn. This is the music I was raised on, and music that it makes me sad to say I turned my back on for a long time, shrugging off my Southern identity in shame. Nowadays, we hear a lot of people talk about their dislike of country music, and it’s rare to hear any kind of country on the Top 40 stations. But most of those people get the whole genre wrong. And I will never listen to Loretta Lynn and not think of my family, or watching Coal Miner’s Daughter with my grandma, or driving into the mountains in the winter with her songs on repeat. Anyone who thinks that country music is just about drinking beer and shooting guns should take a closer look at these lyrics: Yeah, I'm proud to be a coal miner's daughter / I remember well, the well where I drew water / The work we done was hard / At night we'd sleep 'cause we were tired / I never thought of ever leaving Butcher Holler…
And below, a beautiful poem by Silas House:
We dropped a new podcast this week with the very cool 19-year-old puppeteer Sol Ramirez. You can listen above, or you can check out the transcript.
Speaking of podcasts, the episode of Points South I attended a live taping of a few months ago is out now. Two very cool people + a very cool conversation.
And more from Oxford American, this is a truly fantastic essay on outlaws, country music, Black identity, and Beyoncé.