Well. How about we get honest?
Like a lot of people in this world, I struggle with depression. Severe for awhile, now it’s just severe anxiety and moderate depression (woohoo!). It’s super… well, not fun, a lot of the time. Even now I’m about three minutes away from a beach and I struggle to get up and go look at the water some days. And I sometimes feel really ashamed and ungrateful for that.
But it is what it is. When the really bad bouts come up, even peeling yourself out of bed is Herculean. Sisyphean. A full Greek tragedy unfolding.
Believe when it comes
When something is wrong
Don’t leave it / alone…A dark feeling
I could see it coming / on…
August is a beautiful month, a beautiful name, Swift’s “August” is my favorite of her works. In fact, I love everything “au”lish as a rule: aubades (odes to the dawn), auspicious events, audio (music!), au, au, au, the sound itself is golden without the periodic table spoiling the answer.
But besides hazy golden hours, August can be oppressive. I remember a short story I read in my high school English class, August Heat by W.F. Harvey, about a man who takes refuge from a serial killer by, foolishly, waiting the night at the actual serial killer’s house. It ends,
“… the heat is stifling. It is enough to send a man mad.”
Fittingly, Hume’s instagram shows she’s read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, a uniquely dark & diaristic novel, that famously opens, “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs,” immediately revealing our narrator sees the darker side of the season of warmth and celebration.
My one friend, born 8/8, loves the way the date yawns into infinity. A little magical, a little profound, a little eerie.
That’s all to say, it reminds me of something I learned recently. That in January, when it’s coldest, the earth is actually the closest it’ll be to the sun all year – orbitally, or whatever word smarter people use. It’s called Perihelion. Its opposite, Aphelion, is in July, when earth is as far as it’ll be from the sun. What an odd mismatch, but also what a perfect equilibrium! Besides August’s lovely heat is its heaviness, the thickness of joy all the more noticeable when it isn’t synthesizing in an ailing body or mind. Heat all around, but feeling a little cold inside.
I’ll go down / to the water
when I’m feeling better
when this raging heat in my head subsides
No longer lay in bed / with tired eyes
where I barely speak or think
make myself a meal
we’re all about to heal / now…
Most of Hume’s music is melancholic, at least a little bit, and “August” so evocatively describes how it feels to fall into a depressive bout it’s no wonder she takes inspiration from Sylvia Plath. It was Plath’s ability to make the melancholic beautiful and real that has made her book relatable to Hume now sixty years later. And it’s Hume’s song now that made me feel a little better about being stuck in bed today, just outside of all the joy around me, unable to traverse the impossible path between myself and the waters that just might heal me.
But I can’t / read the signs
when my head is cloudy
and everything is out of my mind
when everything is out of my mind
I don’t want to leave now
Hold my fear and say goodbye
thought that I’d be scared,
but I’m terrified
The drums join in; a smattering of steel guitar fills the distance. Hume drags and warbles the end of lines, as if snagging and falling off. Her guitar offers sparse support as occasional vortex-like harmonies distort the vocals.
out of my shell / you burn me down
myself, I thought I could trust
I hate the way you make me think
you’re relevant as hell
Reminiscent of early Suki Waterhouse, or Sweet Trip, Hume continues an ethereal rhythm out into the rest of the song that leaves one feeling seen and a little uplifted. Bit of a deepcut, but I’m also reminded of Loveholic’s “Flowerpot,” which hits that perfect midspace between solemnity and yearning.
“August” is a part of an EP, “Wake Me Up When I’m Older,” which is just as worthwhile of a listen. While I hope we can all experience the more golden, kinder hues of summer, I hope that this song finds you as comfort if – sometimes – it’s a little more gloomy.
Take care of yourself, friends.
“Make myself a meal… we’re all gonna heal now…“
