If you listen closely during Autumn here on the Eastern seaboard of the Empire, you can hear the gentle hum of the Universe. Raised hairs on the nape of your neck, don’t despair. You are sensing during the Fall the quiet passage of Existence. For some it drives them into intoxicants, lonely. For some, it drives them to intoxicants, relishing the diminished weather. For me, I find a gentle joy in the gathering of family around roasted beasts, around football games, around the scattered leaves and the comfy clothing.

This is Monday Morning Commute. The column where we all gather and share what we’re enjoying on a given week. Let us not acknowledge the grind this week, but rather enjoy our little community. Humming along towards star stuff repurposing, humming along together.

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Can you feel the winds of progress caressing your face?

If there’s a breeze at your back, you need to turn around! Post-haste! Hurry up, goddamn it, or else you’re goin’ to miss it! No, not the future — the future’s already old news. Passé. The stuff of anthropology. Hell, every average seventeen year old possesses a single electronic device that can be used to make phone calls, research vast informational databases, watch movies, listen to music, and navigate via GPS.

And that average seventeen year old also wants the newer model.

But rather than letting these futuristic winds whip our backs, let’s trudge forward. Scratch that — let’s sprint. `Cause the fact of the matter is that it’s easy to spin our wheels here in the future. Hell, how could it not be? We’ve got everything that our parents and grandparents could’ve ever imagined. But if we hold our heads high, welcome alien gusts that tussle our hair, and keep movin’ ahead, we could go to some incredible places.

Let’s go beyond the future.

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Thanks for tuning in to the Monday Morning Commute! As per custom, I’m goin’ to show you the various bits of entertainment and brain-rot that I’ll be using to get through the workweek. After scoping out my pile of fun-detritus, hit up the comments section and tell us what you’ll be doin’ this week.

Time to party.

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We can’t go a year without a new Call of Duty dropping some over-the-top wallet fucking edition, can we? Hell no. It’s about as American as it gets. November is football, turkey, and expensive killing packages.

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My lust for autumnal brews   is absolutely insatiable, transforming me into an ethanol Donkey Kong. Stay out of my way, other beers, or you’re liable to get a barrel thrown off your fucking neck! I’m serious, man! Watch out! The spell has been cast, and only orange-labeled harvest-intoxicants will lubricate my arid braincells properly!

Enjoying a recess from His reaping, the mighty Saturn gazes down into the terrestrial realm. Humans and their dominions, ants and their hills. It’s rustic but aspiring, unrealized but bursting with potential. The brisk breeze cools Saturn’s glistening brow and he smiles upon us in gratitude,   for we raise our glasses in his honor. He raises his chalice, teeming with the syrups and elixirs and sweet ambrosial dreams, and reciprocates.

Gods and Men, united in spirits.

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With little over two weeks until Hallow’s Eve, we had all better start breathing in that sweet autumn air. After all, it is mid-October — but unlike Daryl Palumbo, I’m not ranting `bout most early May. I’m here to enjoy the OCTOBERFEAST for everything it’s worth (which, in case you haven’t realized, is quite a bit).

For some reason, I’ve always associated Glassjaw’s Ape Dos Mil with autumn. It is in all likelihood that the lyrical reference to October is responsible for the forming of this mental connection. However, the Literature major and overzealous nerd within compels me to further dissect Ape Dos Mil. In doing so, I’ve discovered  that the track is the musical manifestation of the spirit of autumn.

Yeah, it’s over.

You can bet in mid-October,

I will still be ranting ’bout early May.

Yeah he’s a winner,

He’s a goddamn sinner.

While he dines I’m on the wrong side of the day.

And I said, “I don’t understand why I’m fumbling after.”

You’re the reason I cannot forget this season

Or the letter when she first referred to eight.

And I said…

The lyrics suggest that the remorseful crooner is longing for the days of early May, when the relationship was still new and exciting. At first listen, it may seem as though the words being penned address the literal calendar month and perhaps the true beginnings of love. But it can be no coincidence that the described romance is worthwhile and flourishing in May, which just happens to be the quintessential month of spring — the season best known for ushering in a wholesale sense of life and vitality.

Ape Dos Mil’s narrator tells us that he is now well into mid-October and unable to stop dwelling on the beauty that was his relationship only five short months previously. On the other hand, this linear development also coincides with the sharp thematic contrast of spring and autumn. Just as the leaves are falling and the Earth reclaims all life, Ape Dos Mil paints the portrait of man in decay, the approaching of a personal winter.

While given the story from the perspective of the man who pulled the shortest straw, I think there is something to the notion that the narrator’s  enemy is succeeding because of his ability to transgress. In the aforementioned verse, the narrator pits himself against a rival lover, describing him as both a winner and a goddamn sinner. It is Daryl Palumbo’s delivery of these lyrics that make the listener feel absolute unease, maybe even disgust. How can this new figure succeed while sinning, falling far from the set standards of the ideal? The narrator’s frustration seeps out, noting  that he cannot even stand a chance against the most mundane actions of his former love’s latest beau; “While he dines I’m on the wrong side of the day.”

Taking a step back, it seems as though the protagonist of Ape Dos Mil is simply a spring type of guy — fixated on those times in which the new, refreshing and lively were generated. However, the goddamn sinner of the track is autumn — cast with the role of bringing about decay and eventual death. In truth, neither of these characters can be applauded or derided for their actions, as they as just fulfilling their prescribed duties. Similarly, the female love interest should not be disregarded as a flake or whore. Instead, she can be understood as the  cyclical seasons, the recognition that a changing of the guard must occur.

If you don’t buy into any of the above, don’t worry. You can still enjoy Ape Dos Mil as a somber tale of love that just happens to sound better on an October evening.

Should you find yourself not enjoying the song, at least watch the video without the sound. It’s got creepy clowns, depictions of strange sexual practices and voyeurism — perfectly fitting into OCTOBERFEAST!