Another wonderful deep dive. Through coincidence/record rotation I was just listening to Jo Stafford again a few days ago, and that video from the Judy Garland show was simply astounding.
Although he is sometimes mocked for it, Van Morrison has shown an obsession with actual falling/fallen leaves in many of his songs, again as "elements of the painting" rather than as metaphors in any particular way. As early as "Cypress Avenue" his narrator recalls being entranced as "the leaves fall one by one by one, and call the autumn time a fool." Then in the Moondance title song, "all the leaves on the trees are falling, to the sound of the breezes that blow."
Three years later, he recast his song "Purple Heather" (which he claimed he "wrote," but it is largely a remake of Wild Mountain Thyme -- a summer tune) as an autumn reverie, observing that "when the summertime is gone, and the leaves are gently turning" he will go with his love into the mountains. On the same record, his trance-inducing "Autumn Song" begins with "leaves of brown, they fall to the ground...and it's here, over there, leaves abound" -- for a narrative all about the seasonal changes and celebrations brought by autumn.
A decade later he cast the changing color of leaves in a starring role in the title song of "Sense of Wonder," actually naming as many leaf changing colors as the narrator could come up with in one verse, while also offering with resignation this thought about the emotional state of observing leaves change: "It's easy to describe the leaves in the autumn, and it's oh so easy in the spring....but down through January and February, that's a very different thing." A schoolboy song of nostalgia like "Orangefield" begins with "On a golden autumn day, you came my way...in Orangefield." (And while I suppose the narrator could have been referring to the odd sunny autumn day in Belfast, I've always understood that golden day to be attributed to the fall color change).
There are other examples of his leaf obsession, but I've stretched any reader's patience already.
Finally, an iconic song by the great Australian songwriter Paul Kelly, "Leaps and Bounds," captures perfectly the month of May -- autumn in antipodean nations -- with a non-visual reference to leaves, in this case their incineration -- "I'm breathing today, the month of May, all the burning leaves." For Australians, that early line in the song firmly cemented a personal experience of leaves in all listeners.
Thank you, James. Those Van Morrison examples are fantastic and, as you note, add up to quite the theme for him. I really should have at least included 'Cypress Avenue' in my examples given that I wrote an article about Van some years back in which I made the following point about the version of that song that appears on Too late to Stop Now: "any use of the phrase ‘one by one’ models the thing it describes through the following of ‘one’ with another ‘one’. Morrison extends this poetic quality by singing ‘the leaves fall one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one’ (1:21-1:26), to the extent that one might imagine him surrounded by falling leaves". I'd quite forgotten about that until your comment!
Thanks for the Paul Kelly too - 'burning leaves' is a great line.
This is a lovely piece, Richard. I live in a beautiful, damp part of the US where we are surrounded by trees. Western Oregon is essentially a temperate rainforest. The autumnal colors in our neighborhood, on our road, and the western hills that outline downtown Portland to the west - are stunning. It also means, however, that I am raking leaves for literally two+ months. But it is so worth it because not only do the trees bring our house lovely shade in the summer, but they are home to many vocal crows, other birds and families of raccoons and squirrels.
While reading this, I also couldn't help but think about Nick Drake's album title, 'Five Leaves Left,' but also a couple of quotes the American artist, Georgia O'Keefe, once said about her flower paintings:
"Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see...takes time. It’s like having a friend. Having a friend takes time."
And...
"I decided that if I painted a flower huge, you cannot ignore its beauty.”.
Both of these quotes are so powerful, as art is about learning how to see and music is about listening. Within the songs you listed, you clearly took the time to become close friends with them, and as with O'Keefe's large flower paintings, you clearly can't ignore the song's beauty.
One of the things I vividly remember about my time during the pandemic is that my wife and I would go on very long walks throughout the city, and we noticed the little things that many of us miss amongst the busyness of our normal lives. Taking the time to see the kaleidoscopic colors of spring, the cluster of bees on flowers in the front gardens throughout Portland's neighborhoods, the sounds of kids playing, and eventually the first sign of autumn on the trees were all key moments during the 2020 lockdown. It also brought a sense of calm and beauty, as for over 100 days the evenings descended into chaos with the riots and tear-gassed skies in the night (which lasted over three months in Portland).
Lastly, Nelson is right—the weed is stronger. I stopped smoking because it's too strong. But it's also not weed growing in the wild. The stuff grown today is genetically modified, or cross-pollinated to blow your head off. It's also legal in Oregon, and the smell of weed is part of the urban fabric and tapestry of this city.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts on leaves, songs, and the artists behind the lyrics.
PS: Oh, I just remembered... Last year, we cut a small bit off a houseplant and put it in a glass of water until it grew roots. We then planted it in its own pot, and it is now a healthy plant. 😊
Thank you, Michael, for evoking autumnal Western Oregon. I've never been to Oregon, but have harboured a wish to visit ever since reading Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion more than three decades ago.
I did think about that Nick Drake reference while writing about this, and Drake is certainly someone I would want to write about when thinking about how time and the seasons are used in songs. Thinking about 'Five Leaves Left' reminded me that leaves are also pieces of paper, and my reflections took a different direction at that time.
I was so happy to be able to see the Georgia O'Keefe paintings on display at the Art Insitute of Chicago when I was there last year. I have books of the flowers paintings, but to see them 'in the flesh' was something else. I like thosee lines of hers that you've quoted, and I feel they resonate well with what Francis Ponge was doing with his poetry: elevating things that might otherwise be taken for granted or overlooked.
I was just thinking about you, and thinking about the idea of songs that reference time as an abstract quality. Seeing Nick Drake mentioned, I offer you a stub of a list.
I started thinking about "Lonesome Robin" (which I wrote about here -- https://earnestnessisunderrated.substack.com/p/the-death-of-robin-hood ) which, in the first verse, has one of the great images of objects in song (" bend back your bow one last time") and then, in the final verse, switches from the specific ("your bow" to the general "contraptions" as he is dying). "Now time has took your time away / Time and contraptions have slowed you down"
I lived many years in Western Oregon, and your descriptions of the leaf life in the fall are very familiar. These days I rake my epic amount of leaves in Ann Arbor, MI.
Regarding "Five Leaves Left," for many years I thought Nick Drake was in some way referring to tree leaves or at least to some autumnal reference. Turns out instead that his brand of rolling papers had a note that popped up when the pack was almost out -- "five leaves left" -- and our Nick, ever the committed herb smoker, took that as his debut album title.
So many gorgeous songs in this post I hadn't heard before. I was very taken with Elis Regina and Midlake, but also deeply touched by the Highwaymen.
It's funny because I've always equated autumn with new beginnings as that's when we kids started a new year in school, in a new classroom sometimes in a new building with different kids. It was an opportunity to start anew, to right past wrongs and missteps, and to regenerate old relationships. To me it's always a joyful season leading into a spate of holidays that celebrate different facets of life, followed by the hibernation and gathering in of energy in the first months of the new year before rebirth occurs.
So I guess I find the minor chords and sad feelings out of synch with my own feelings about the season. Perhaps also it's because autumn was when you could collect colorful leaves and press them between wax paper and give them as gifts. Or glory in the trees' magnificent and drunken party before taking a well-earned snooze.
That’s such a lovely way of experiencing autumn, Ellen. I, too, love it as a season. I adore encountering different kinds of turning or falling leaves in different places.
As a bonus track, there’s a lovely take on ‘Autumn Leaves’ that I didn’t mention in the piece, from Arooj Aftab’s most recent album: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9YQj4nQQ-eY.
Thank you for the kind words and for sharing the post. Ponge has become something of a patron saint of my project. I keep discovering new translations; the one I used for this post is different to previous ones I'd seen and just felt right for where my head was while writing.
I thought that the translation was very good (though I must admit that I read it quickly; will come back to it), and I very much liked the para from her intro that you included. Oddly enough, I think that this might be the first time seeing anything of his in English. I mostly read him a long time ago -- as in, when still in university -- and he was one of those important writers to me for a time, as it happens; but very unusually he has stayed with me more as an approach than as specific text. It's nice to be reminded of why he was so much in my world back then, and lovely the way you brought him in here.
As always, there are so many interesting threads, I hope you won't mind a tangent.
The first thing I thought of, reading this, was a post that I read which included a lovely reading of Edward Thomas' "There's Nothing Like The Sun". When I first heard it I thought, "I want to include that on a mix-CD at some point." I never did, but it relates to folk music for me. The recording is here; it's only a minute and a half. It's about the sun, rather than leaves, but thematically related.
[Edited: the direct link appears to break. so look for the link on the word "download" in the article below]
I feel like I'm still trying to make sense of the song, but I think I would summarize it as juxtaposing what sounds like a developing romance which feels like it freezes time in the delight of the moment with the sense of seasons and time passing in the world outside.
It's beautiful, I'm just not sure I'm understanding it correctly.
Great piece. I now need to go back and check out a thousand other versions of Autumn Leaves!
You said: 'I couldn't think of any Dylan songs that extensively delve into the topic of leaves falling' - perhaps not extensively but how about Ballad in Plain D, for its seasonal allusions, 'I once loved a girl . . . with the innocence of a lamb' and 'In a young summer's youth I stole her away' to the autumnal 'The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet' (this after eight or nine excoriating verses detailing the breakdown of the relationship) onto 'I think of her often and hope whoever she's met will be fully aware of how precious she is' (thus guy's in purgatory) and the final cryptic verse of an eternal (?) winter's imprisonment: '"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"'
Thanks, Martin. I knew there had to be some examples of Dylan getting seasonal beyond his version of 'Autumn Leaves' (and his Christmas album of course) and 'Ballad in Plain D' is a great contender.
I keep thinking about "Last Leaf", which is really good.
I went back and listened to the Tom Waits original and the contrast is striking. As you say, the respective ages of the performers is an important part of that, but Willie is a great interpreter of songs and he really brings out the meaning and emotional weight in his performance.
Another wonderful deep dive. Through coincidence/record rotation I was just listening to Jo Stafford again a few days ago, and that video from the Judy Garland show was simply astounding.
Although he is sometimes mocked for it, Van Morrison has shown an obsession with actual falling/fallen leaves in many of his songs, again as "elements of the painting" rather than as metaphors in any particular way. As early as "Cypress Avenue" his narrator recalls being entranced as "the leaves fall one by one by one, and call the autumn time a fool." Then in the Moondance title song, "all the leaves on the trees are falling, to the sound of the breezes that blow."
Three years later, he recast his song "Purple Heather" (which he claimed he "wrote," but it is largely a remake of Wild Mountain Thyme -- a summer tune) as an autumn reverie, observing that "when the summertime is gone, and the leaves are gently turning" he will go with his love into the mountains. On the same record, his trance-inducing "Autumn Song" begins with "leaves of brown, they fall to the ground...and it's here, over there, leaves abound" -- for a narrative all about the seasonal changes and celebrations brought by autumn.
A decade later he cast the changing color of leaves in a starring role in the title song of "Sense of Wonder," actually naming as many leaf changing colors as the narrator could come up with in one verse, while also offering with resignation this thought about the emotional state of observing leaves change: "It's easy to describe the leaves in the autumn, and it's oh so easy in the spring....but down through January and February, that's a very different thing." A schoolboy song of nostalgia like "Orangefield" begins with "On a golden autumn day, you came my way...in Orangefield." (And while I suppose the narrator could have been referring to the odd sunny autumn day in Belfast, I've always understood that golden day to be attributed to the fall color change).
There are other examples of his leaf obsession, but I've stretched any reader's patience already.
Finally, an iconic song by the great Australian songwriter Paul Kelly, "Leaps and Bounds," captures perfectly the month of May -- autumn in antipodean nations -- with a non-visual reference to leaves, in this case their incineration -- "I'm breathing today, the month of May, all the burning leaves." For Australians, that early line in the song firmly cemented a personal experience of leaves in all listeners.
Thanks for all of your writiing Richard.
Thank you, James. Those Van Morrison examples are fantastic and, as you note, add up to quite the theme for him. I really should have at least included 'Cypress Avenue' in my examples given that I wrote an article about Van some years back in which I made the following point about the version of that song that appears on Too late to Stop Now: "any use of the phrase ‘one by one’ models the thing it describes through the following of ‘one’ with another ‘one’. Morrison extends this poetic quality by singing ‘the leaves fall one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one’ (1:21-1:26), to the extent that one might imagine him surrounded by falling leaves". I'd quite forgotten about that until your comment!
Thanks for the Paul Kelly too - 'burning leaves' is a great line.
This is a lovely piece, Richard. I live in a beautiful, damp part of the US where we are surrounded by trees. Western Oregon is essentially a temperate rainforest. The autumnal colors in our neighborhood, on our road, and the western hills that outline downtown Portland to the west - are stunning. It also means, however, that I am raking leaves for literally two+ months. But it is so worth it because not only do the trees bring our house lovely shade in the summer, but they are home to many vocal crows, other birds and families of raccoons and squirrels.
While reading this, I also couldn't help but think about Nick Drake's album title, 'Five Leaves Left,' but also a couple of quotes the American artist, Georgia O'Keefe, once said about her flower paintings:
"Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see...takes time. It’s like having a friend. Having a friend takes time."
And...
"I decided that if I painted a flower huge, you cannot ignore its beauty.”.
Both of these quotes are so powerful, as art is about learning how to see and music is about listening. Within the songs you listed, you clearly took the time to become close friends with them, and as with O'Keefe's large flower paintings, you clearly can't ignore the song's beauty.
One of the things I vividly remember about my time during the pandemic is that my wife and I would go on very long walks throughout the city, and we noticed the little things that many of us miss amongst the busyness of our normal lives. Taking the time to see the kaleidoscopic colors of spring, the cluster of bees on flowers in the front gardens throughout Portland's neighborhoods, the sounds of kids playing, and eventually the first sign of autumn on the trees were all key moments during the 2020 lockdown. It also brought a sense of calm and beauty, as for over 100 days the evenings descended into chaos with the riots and tear-gassed skies in the night (which lasted over three months in Portland).
Lastly, Nelson is right—the weed is stronger. I stopped smoking because it's too strong. But it's also not weed growing in the wild. The stuff grown today is genetically modified, or cross-pollinated to blow your head off. It's also legal in Oregon, and the smell of weed is part of the urban fabric and tapestry of this city.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts on leaves, songs, and the artists behind the lyrics.
PS: Oh, I just remembered... Last year, we cut a small bit off a houseplant and put it in a glass of water until it grew roots. We then planted it in its own pot, and it is now a healthy plant. 😊
Thank you, Michael, for evoking autumnal Western Oregon. I've never been to Oregon, but have harboured a wish to visit ever since reading Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion more than three decades ago.
I did think about that Nick Drake reference while writing about this, and Drake is certainly someone I would want to write about when thinking about how time and the seasons are used in songs. Thinking about 'Five Leaves Left' reminded me that leaves are also pieces of paper, and my reflections took a different direction at that time.
I was so happy to be able to see the Georgia O'Keefe paintings on display at the Art Insitute of Chicago when I was there last year. I have books of the flowers paintings, but to see them 'in the flesh' was something else. I like thosee lines of hers that you've quoted, and I feel they resonate well with what Francis Ponge was doing with his poetry: elevating things that might otherwise be taken for granted or overlooked.
I was just thinking about you, and thinking about the idea of songs that reference time as an abstract quality. Seeing Nick Drake mentioned, I offer you a stub of a list.
I started thinking about "Lonesome Robin" (which I wrote about here -- https://earnestnessisunderrated.substack.com/p/the-death-of-robin-hood ) which, in the first verse, has one of the great images of objects in song (" bend back your bow one last time") and then, in the final verse, switches from the specific ("your bow" to the general "contraptions" as he is dying). "Now time has took your time away / Time and contraptions have slowed you down"
Which made me think of both Nick Drake and then Michael Smith's "Time" (https://michaelpetersmith.com/lyrics/time.shtml ) with the devastating and clever verse
"Inside his taxi Time moves through the city
He finds a place to have a rum and coke
He smiles a lot but he's not one for pity
He makes old men live backwards for a joke
Across the room a girl dressed all in feathers
They meet and soon they're dancing close together
She's being clever says she could dance forever"
I lived many years in Western Oregon, and your descriptions of the leaf life in the fall are very familiar. These days I rake my epic amount of leaves in Ann Arbor, MI.
Regarding "Five Leaves Left," for many years I thought Nick Drake was in some way referring to tree leaves or at least to some autumnal reference. Turns out instead that his brand of rolling papers had a note that popped up when the pack was almost out -- "five leaves left" -- and our Nick, ever the committed herb smoker, took that as his debut album title.
I hadn't known the origin of the album title; that is funny.
So many gorgeous songs in this post I hadn't heard before. I was very taken with Elis Regina and Midlake, but also deeply touched by the Highwaymen.
It's funny because I've always equated autumn with new beginnings as that's when we kids started a new year in school, in a new classroom sometimes in a new building with different kids. It was an opportunity to start anew, to right past wrongs and missteps, and to regenerate old relationships. To me it's always a joyful season leading into a spate of holidays that celebrate different facets of life, followed by the hibernation and gathering in of energy in the first months of the new year before rebirth occurs.
So I guess I find the minor chords and sad feelings out of synch with my own feelings about the season. Perhaps also it's because autumn was when you could collect colorful leaves and press them between wax paper and give them as gifts. Or glory in the trees' magnificent and drunken party before taking a well-earned snooze.
That’s such a lovely way of experiencing autumn, Ellen. I, too, love it as a season. I adore encountering different kinds of turning or falling leaves in different places.
As a bonus track, there’s a lovely take on ‘Autumn Leaves’ that I didn’t mention in the piece, from Arooj Aftab’s most recent album: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9YQj4nQQ-eY.
What an amazing tour this is. The breadth of it -- I'll need to come back for a second and probably third round later on.
Lovely to see Francis Ponge unexpectedly, and most of the music is new to me.
Words being to humans as leaves are to trees is a lovely image.
And songs as lasting...yes. I know someone with dementia who just today was teaching songs to the young people who are caring for her. It's beautiful.
Thanks for this. and looking forward to rereading and to listening.
Thank you for the kind words and for sharing the post. Ponge has become something of a patron saint of my project. I keep discovering new translations; the one I used for this post is different to previous ones I'd seen and just felt right for where my head was while writing.
I thought that the translation was very good (though I must admit that I read it quickly; will come back to it), and I very much liked the para from her intro that you included. Oddly enough, I think that this might be the first time seeing anything of his in English. I mostly read him a long time ago -- as in, when still in university -- and he was one of those important writers to me for a time, as it happens; but very unusually he has stayed with me more as an approach than as specific text. It's nice to be reminded of why he was so much in my world back then, and lovely the way you brought him in here.
As always, there are so many interesting threads, I hope you won't mind a tangent.
The first thing I thought of, reading this, was a post that I read which included a lovely reading of Edward Thomas' "There's Nothing Like The Sun". When I first heard it I thought, "I want to include that on a mix-CD at some point." I never did, but it relates to folk music for me. The recording is here; it's only a minute and a half. It's about the sun, rather than leaves, but thematically related.
[Edited: the direct link appears to break. so look for the link on the word "download" in the article below]
The original article is here: https://www.slate.com/articles/arts/classic_poems/2013/05/edward_thomas_there_s_nothing_like_the_sun_the_poet_s_verse_has_the_heightened.html
Thanks, Nick. I don't mind that tangent at all. It's a lovely poem - thanks for sharing it.
Okay, then one more. I've just came across the Iron & Wine song "Autumn Town Leaves" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUjHCqjr5SI
I feel like I'm still trying to make sense of the song, but I think I would summarize it as juxtaposing what sounds like a developing romance which feels like it freezes time in the delight of the moment with the sense of seasons and time passing in the world outside.
It's beautiful, I'm just not sure I'm understanding it correctly.
Yes, that seems to fit the bill. To add to the list of melancholy autumn songs.
Great piece. I now need to go back and check out a thousand other versions of Autumn Leaves!
You said: 'I couldn't think of any Dylan songs that extensively delve into the topic of leaves falling' - perhaps not extensively but how about Ballad in Plain D, for its seasonal allusions, 'I once loved a girl . . . with the innocence of a lamb' and 'In a young summer's youth I stole her away' to the autumnal 'The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet' (this after eight or nine excoriating verses detailing the breakdown of the relationship) onto 'I think of her often and hope whoever she's met will be fully aware of how precious she is' (thus guy's in purgatory) and the final cryptic verse of an eternal (?) winter's imprisonment: '"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"'
Best.
Thanks, Martin. I knew there had to be some examples of Dylan getting seasonal beyond his version of 'Autumn Leaves' (and his Christmas album of course) and 'Ballad in Plain D' is a great contender.
I am afraid this one wins
I keep thinking about "Last Leaf", which is really good.
I went back and listened to the Tom Waits original and the contrast is striking. As you say, the respective ages of the performers is an important part of that, but Willie is a great interpreter of songs and he really brings out the meaning and emotional weight in his performance.
Outstanding