It’s day 2 of the august series, and I’ve already procrastinated to such a degree that it’s 11pm and I’ve only got an hour to write the post, so we’re off to a flying start. Start off how you mean to continue, I suppose; there was never any prospect of me putting these posts together in a timely fashion, and I’ve essentially committed to writing each one within the allocated day, so here we are. I may need to revisit today’s theme in a later post if I run out of time.
As I mentioned in my opening post, august spans the range of the human experience. Maybe not every emotion, strictly speaking, but certainly the ones which I feel define my experience. Possibly the cornerstone of the song is nostalgia, but I think we often misunderstand nostalgia. Nostalgia isn’t a yearning for a specific experience, or a desire to revisit a certain time; rather, it’s a desire to recapture what truly can’t ever be recaptured, even in memories, and that’s the feeling associated with a certain time or experience. In my view, august captures this sensation better than any other piece of art. It’s the ultimate nostalgic song.
The bridge will probably deserve its own post, but I can’t avoid mentioning it here, specifically these lines:
Back when we were still changing for the better
Wanting was enough
For me, it was enough
To live for the hope of it all
I think the directness of these lines belies their complexity. They’re the lines which resonated most with me when I first heard the song – the idea that “we” used to be improving, and that something has interrupted that process, is deeply human in a way that’s hard to explain. There’s an idea that something has been corrupted, that a purity – maybe even a naïveté – has been taken away. With a first love, you can convince yourself that it’s your only love, that this is it. It might be an illusion, and you might even know it’s an illusion, but at the time, it can feel real. When that love breaks down, or in the case of the song simply fails to really materialise, the illusion is shattered, and something really precious is taken away. No longer does it feel like you’re changing for the better. Instead, you’re becoming jaded, cynical, questioning. You can’t assume the best about yourself or others, because love has been lost, and if love can’t be sustained, what hope is there? I think that’s why, as they say, the first one cuts the deepest.
The nostalgia in august is a desire to return to the time before the illusion is shattered, but it’s moreso a desire to return to the feeling of pure hope which comes from the illusion of a permanent first love. It’s not even happiness, really. After all, it’s described as a state of “wanting” and of “hope”, not of joy and contentment. But anticipation is often better than the real thing, and it’s seemingly impossible to regain the purity of that anticipation after the first heartbreak. Any future anticipation will always be tempered, and you’ll be shyer, more guarded, less vulnerable, knowing that diving in headfirst can expose you to so much pain. Even though we feel that we’re being sensible and protecting ourselves by limiting our investment, we wish we could get back the mindset that let us abandon our caution.
There’s a certain irony, of course, to the purity of the feelings in august, which isn’t really present in the song but forms part of the wider canon: the song is part of the so-called “teenage love triangle” in folklore, and august is the story of James’ affair, from the perspective of the “other woman”. The asymmetry of feeling in the song probably also deserves its own post, but it’s relevant here, since august‘s nostalgia is also for a time when it was possible to believe that, even if the romance started in a troublesome way, it could have been real. Again, there’s a naïvité to this belief, but it is also – in a way – quite beautiful. The world can break down our optimism, but it also relies on its persistence. When we lose our naïvité, we can’t help but wish we could get it back.
I think that’s about all I have in me tonight. I’m noticing that these posts are very difficult to write. There’s a level of earnestness that I’m not used to displaying, and I keep subconsciously trying to cover it up. Throughout this post, I’ve been writing “we”, as if I’m speaking for anyone other than myself. Hopefully vulnerability will feel more natural as I write more, but in the meantime, it’s a little tiring, and I’m still not convinced by the quality of either the writing or the thoughts themselves. At any rate, that’s day 2 completed; 29 posts to go.