I’m not sure that listening to august – a very sad song – multiple times a day, every day, is doing good things for my brain.
Obviously, I love the song. I wouldn’t be doing this series if I didn’t. I’ve listened to it countless times over the four years since its release, and I listened to it 100 times within its first three days (thanks for that little detail, Spotify Wrapped. 2020 was difficult). Listening to it and writing about it, however, is an entirely different experience. I’m having to really think about the song, what it means, what it feels like, what it contains. In doing so, I’m also having to do a lot of introspection, because I can’t write about what the song means, only what it means to me. So much for the Summer of the Mindless Self.
All of this calls to mind one of the more curious aspects of the human condition: the fact that it doesn’t always feel bad to feel bad. Sometimes, feeling bad can feel quite good. Wallowing in self-pity is miserable, of course, but it’s also somehow quite satisfying. There’s a level of validation, or maybe vindication, from allowing yourself to truly believe that your circumstances are awful, and that you’re unlucky, and that the world is out to get you, &c. Indulging your melancholy doesn’t make you feel better, of course: that can only be achieved, in my experience, by actually leaving the funk, rather than letting the funk consume you. But it’s also not as totally awful as it sounds.
Taylor Swift is very good at indulging her melancholy through the medium of song, and august is a prime example of this. It’s not even real melancholy that she’s indulging; she made up a situation to get mad about! But, of course, the feelings she captures are real, even if the situation isn’t. Much of the introspection necessary for these posts is in figuring out how and why I relate to different elements of the song, and where it applies to my life. The nature of art is that reality is secondary to truth.
The odd thing about august‘s melancholy is that it’s an optimistic sort of melancholy – which I suppose is what makes it nostalgia. I’ve already written about that, but the lens here is slightly different. I think when I wrote about nostalgia before, I was writing about what had been lost; the melancholic aspect is more about the fact that something was lost in the first place. The references to better times – “Back when we were still changing for the better” and “Back when I was living for the hope of it all” – are rooted in nostalgia, but also in a sense of profound loss, and a sense that things really didn’t get better.
Although cardigan is maybe a sadder song, at least in terms of its sound and feel, it also carries a sense that the situation would ultimately improve or reach a resolution – “I knew you’d come back to me”. august has no such balm. I rewatched La La Land a few days ago, and I think this is something they have in common. La La Land is a film where – spoiler alert – there isn’t really a happy ending. Yes, Mia and Sebastian get what they wanted – he gets his jazz club, she gets her career as a film star – but they lose each other. The film even shows us a montage of the characters in their alternative, happier lives together, just to remove any doubt that yes, that ending would have been better. Sometimes, the right thing just doesn’t happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The nice thing about august and La La Land is that they both seem to have a level of peace about this. They indulge melancholy; they wallow; but they’re stoic, too. august doesn’t have the anger that cardigan does, even though cardigan is the song with the happy ending (or the cathartic ending, if Betty ultimately rejects James; either way, she’s won, in a way that august‘s narrator simply hasn’t). Where it gets complicated is in figuring out whether august is presented with stoicism, or simply resignation.
I wish I had an answer. This would be a much more satisfying post if I did. Unfortunately, I don’t, or at least not an answer I can really justify. I don’t even really know how to assess, from the outside, the difference between stoicism and resignation. They seem so similar, and it’s really just a question of one’s attitude to a situation, and even then, I don’t think there’s a neat distinction between different attitudes, let alone how they manifest in one’s words or behaviour. august is particularly tricky in this regard because it’s ostensibly addressed to the person at the heart of the situation in the first place.
I mentioned at the top that these posts had required an unsettling amount of introspection. This one is no exception. Reflecting on the differences between stoicism and resignation is leading me to question whether I know what I’m okay with: whether I stoically accept situations I genuinely can’t change, or just meekly decide that I can’t change them. It’s odd, really, how difficult it is to understand your feelings. They’re yours, after all. And yet books have been written, therapy sessions provided, and aphorisms propogated on the basis that “know yourself” is a useful instruction – which it wouldn’t be, if it were automatic.
I like to tell people that “it’s never about what it’s about”. Usually I’m talking about other people – trying to explain weird behaviour – but it’s just as true for me as it is for them. And it’s true for these blog posts, as well. They’re about august, but really they’re about me. All writing is about the author, and all authors are egoists, and even though I’m not trying to get anyone to read these posts – not really, or at least not yet – I’m just as ego-driven as the rest of them. I may not be indulging my melancholy at the moment, but I’m certainly indulging myself, at least once a day for the rest of the month.