Welcome to the 98th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 97 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
There’s a sliver of time every November after fall but before winter that remains the most underrated time of the year. I like to call it “Microcastle Weather.”
I can trace “Microcastle Weather” back to November 2008 when Facebook introduced that little box that used to be on the left side of the screen under your profile picture and is now called the “Intro” on top of your biographical information (mine currently reads, “i’m all right, i just forget you all the time,” which I think it probably has for, like, 12 years at this point).
Anyway, I was obsessed with Deerhunter’s Microcastle at the time that Facebook introduced that feature, and “Never Stops” was one of my favorite songs on the album, along with “Agoraphobia” and “Nothing Ever Happened.” The last of those three songs is the obvious banger of the record, but “Never Stops” felt like the best song to me. Moses Archuleta’s drumming was so metronomic, and the track would get stuck in my head during the long runs at cross country practice. It has a certain airiness and float to it, too, that made it the perfect song to listen to while laying in bed and staring at the ceiling while contemplating being 16.
So I went through the lyrics and popped, “i love winter in my heart. it never stops.” into the box on my Facebook, and I listened to the song and album daily. Thus, Microcastle Weather was born.
Microcastle Weather isn’t fully fall. It comes after the foliage has popped, after the bright yellows, reads and oranges. The leaves during Microcastle Weather are mostly brown, and the branches are mostly bare. The sky can be a deep, cloudless blue or a slate gray. Temperature-wise, it can range from the high 30s to the low 60s. October and November in the mid-Atlantic are impossible to pin down nowadays, anyway. But overall, Microcastle Weather is pleasant, and it’s not extreme. It works on either side of the time change, too, whether it’s getting dark at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m.
Microcastle Weather is for contemplation, for digging inward into what awaits in December and January. I remember November 2008, the fall of junior year, as the time where life really began to lurch forward with decisions that needed to be made and the contours of “real life” starting to become more clear. Ready or not, momentum was building, and there was much, much more to consider at that point than there had been before. Microcastle — with great song titles likes “Saved By Old Times” and “Neither of Us, Uncertaintly” — was a soundtrack for that, and an embrace as the weather turned itself toward winter.
This year, I felt like I wasted my fall because of travel and other circumstances, but I didn’t want to waste my Microcastle Weather. But over the past few weeks, I made some time with the album. It’s been 14 years since I first became aware of Bradford Cox and Deerhunter (and 13 years since I took the photo atop this post), but the first notes of “Cover Me Slowly” and the final dissonance of “Twilight At Carbon Lake” brought me to a place to think and to feel. Next November, I would recommend it.
Thank you for reading the 98th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
This port of call
It ain’t no port at all
But cap my cup, and anchors up
The jokers, they tease another hand
But they’re out of luck ‘cause I’m out of town
And the sun, it's like an omen
Goading me toward the gospel
But I got no plans at all
Except a drink as soon as possible
—D.G.