The Art of Season Cycle | Part 4: Autumn
For Season Cycle, my four-part project to write EPs for the seasons, each track has a distinct artwork using photographs from my collection. In this blog series, I’ve been showcasing the art and talking about how I captured the images. Full disclosure: Autumn features a ton of images of leaves (that’s pretty much the hallmark of the season, right?). Feel free to listen along while you read!
The Cover Art
I really love when photos capture interesting angles of everyday objects. Here, a curled red leaf on the ground filled with water after an Autumn rain. At standing height, it is easily ignored among the numerous other fallen leaves—up close, however, this water creates an (un)natural reflection of the tree above, warped and abstracted by the surface tension of the water along the leaf’s edges. I had this photo selected for the album cover artwork long before I’d even figured out the music!
Autumnal Equinox
Sorry, “water on leaves” is kind of a theme for this one. I just find it incredibly fascinating how water droplets form on the surface of a leaf, catching the light and magnifying the leaf’s textures. Scroll onward—there will be more of these…
First Date
My first date ever was on a Friday evening in September. I was in high school, an awkward and nervous teenager. We went to a nearby park and walked along the edge of the forest, watching as the brilliant light of the Golden Hour™ unfolded through the trees. This song and photo are meant to convey that scene, a hopeful and nostalgic feeling of getting to be close to a (hopefully) special someone for the first time.
Sweater Weather
One of the things I enjoy most about Autumn is when the summer heat fades. Being able to open the windows and wear jeans & sweaters comfortably after months of heat and humidity is so refreshing. There’s nothing quite like going for a walk outside and feeling the warmth of the sun competing with the chilly autumn breeze, while admiring the brilliant colors against a clear, blue sky. This photo is of the tree in front of my house, which never fails to take my breath away at its colorful peak.
October Rain
As promised, here’s more raindrops on leaves! Unfortunately Autumn isn’t all sunny days and beautiful leaves. I like to pretend that the gray, cold days aren’t also coming to get us, but they are inevitable. Not to get all silver linings here, but without those rainy days, we wouldn’t have beautiful sights like this:
Wishes That Never Came True
As all of the spring/summer signs of life fade into Autumn, it’s easy to get drawn inward and reflect on regrets & missed opportunities. Perhaps it’s something small that you wish you’d done during the summer, or something larger (a failed relationship, a job opportunity, a decision that you wish you’d made at one of life’s crossroads). Most of the time, there’s nothing we can do to change those paths not taken, but they can still fill us with feelings of melancholy. I thought it was appropriate to pair this song with a close-up of a leaf in the late stages of Autumn, its surface covered in scratches and scars. Does a leaf dream of its days upon the branch, swaying in the breeze? Does it wish it had led a different life than this?
Ruskaretki (feat. Chris Hobbs)
My good friend Chris sent me the acoustic guitar improvisation in June 2023. I put together the backing track shortly after, and the whole thing sat on the shelf for a couple of years, untitled. As Season Cycle started to come together, I asked Chris for autumn-themed title suggestions, and he presented terms from several different languages that all referred to the act of admiring autumn’s colors: momijigari (紅葉狩り), dan pung ku gyeong (단풍 구경), ruskaretki. We ultimately settled on ruskaretki, a Finnish word that refers to taking a journey to view and admire the colors of the autumn season. It pairs nicely with this photo, which I took at Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum (which is allegedly the second-largest cemetery in the USA). I love how the path curves off into the forest, inviting one to follow it and explore the autumn colors up close.
I Can Still Feel The Earth Turn
The closing track on Season Cycle: Autumn also signifies the end of the Season Cycle project. I thought it was fitting that this song paired with a photo of a sunset, the familiar ending to every day. There’s a bittersweet edge to this one, a feeling of closure, yet also a feeling that perhaps we didn’t get to do everything we wanted to (that’s the human condition, I suppose). But the earth continues to spin, the sun will rise again, the seasons will continue their cycle.
And that gets us through the final track of Season Cycle: Autumn, and the conclusion of the Season Cycle project in general. If you purchase and download a copy of the EP, there is a digital booklet with some additional photography not mentioned here—just in case you like what you see here and want to see more!
I’m not quite finished with Season Cycle yet, as I’m working toward a physical release that compiles all of the EPs together (including some digital bonus tracks), AND I’ve got a compilation of remixes/reworks that’s in development, too. No solid timeline for any of this yet, but watch this space!
I’ve really enjoyed putting this project together, and I hope you have enjoyed following along throughout the year. I acknowledge that these songs are not representative of how everyone experiences the seasons (my Northern Hemisphere / American Midwest bias is a big factor here). Even if you live in a part of the world where your experience of the seasons is not like my own, I hope that, even if just for a moment, these songs immerse you into the cold of winter, the blooms of spring, the humidity of summer, and the blazing colors of autumn.
Check out the other entries in this blog series: