SOLAR FLARE | Ithacan Isolation

Right now, we’re staring down that last three-week dragging period between the reprieves of Fall Break and Thanksgiving. With the passing of Halloween and all its requisite festivities, there’s nothing to look forward to for the foreseeable future other than work and gloomy weather. It’s times like these that Ithaca really starts to feel isolated — from family, from friends, from the rest of civilization. Cornell can feel like a bubble sometimes, separated from the rest of the world. So, here’s a playlist for when you want to wallow in that feeling while waiting for happier times (i.e. Thanksgiving break) to arrive.

Songs for an Autumn Evening – A New Englander’s Cold Embrace

Growing up in Massachusetts, where puffy winter coats always covered Halloween costumes and the cold lasted until late April, seasonal reinvention became a way of life. Now, I find myself treasuring nighttime and darkness as the overcast begins to consume more of our days. Even as we disappear beneath layers of jackets and vests and our senses dull in darkness, fall offers us a chance to return to the self. We are able to get lost in our thoughts as the weather gets less forgiving. I say we welcome these thoughts, taking them in with the dark and somber of autumn.

JONES | Venison and Numerology: The Stories of Bon Iver

Sometimes, the story behind an album eats up the album itself. The legend is that 25-year-old Justin Vernon, graduate of the University of Wisconsin — Eau Claire with a degree in religious studies, had hit a rough patch. Tortured by the unfulfilled yearning of his hungry, wild heart, he retreated to a cabin in Wisconsin to commune with the gods of young white male pain. Alone in the snow, he crafted out of the forge of his soul a collection of songs of such tender, fragile beauty that they didn’t even need discernible lyrics to make you cry. The resulting album, For Emma, Forever Ago, quickly helped define a growing scene of bearded, flannel-wearing, woodsy/folksy/strumming singer-songwriter hipsters, a movement that vaguely championed a return to nature and natural instruments.