guest post: mlle ghoul's 'night music'

As one woman might pack away brightly-colored linen sundresses and cork espadrilles at summer’s end in favor of leather boots and hound’s-tooth trousers more suited for autumn’s chill, so do I make my own trades in anticipation of cooler weather and darker nights. However, whereas the sartorially inclined may be working on supplementing their Fall/Winter wardrobe, those with an aural inclination are busy reorganizing their music collection. Is this a strange observation? I include myself amongst this strange bunch.

When days are long and the sun is bright, I have always thought that the sound of one’s summer heart translated into a sort of music. The beat of one’s pulse at midsummer is hotter, stronger; it sings through the veins and the limbs must dance to its rhythms… and so I choose my warm-weather listening accordingly. There may or may not be some top 40-esque dance music in my songlists during this time. I will neither confirm nor deny.

But as the mornings grow chilled, and the days shorter; when the leaves turn from jade to russet to flame, and fall and die with a brittle crackle at ones feet; when the nights are impossibly dark and very possibly haunted…my blood runs at a quieter, ponderous pace. As if its pathway to my heart must gradually cool and freeze. The pulse beats a dolorous, dying drum in my ears.

Gloomy, sonorous cellos. Unearthly violins. Ghostly theremins. Awash with mournful motifs and evocative of dusk fall grey and cold, eerie midnight winds and candlelit windows to ward against the dark, the sounds of this season call to mind the following command from Bram Stoker’s aristocratic anti-hero, Count Dracula:

“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make”

The following is my own suggested playlist of Night Music for the coming darkness; may it provide strange comfort and somber rhythms for autumn hearts, slowing and silent.

 Click >> here <<  for a playlist which will be available for download only until the end of September.


thanks to mlle ghoul for another great guest post! you can find more from this delightful and talented lady here.