There seems to be a sort of national obsession with the season of fall. To be sure, there are perfectly obvious reasons for this – the aesthetics of colorful trees, reprieve from heat, the simple joy of ritual. But I believe it speaks to a deeper hunger for simplicity, and simplicity’s right hand, contentment.
When I dream of fall, I superimpose a scene from a late 90s rom-com – like “You’ve Got Mail.” What I love about these films is that people’s lives are depicted within reason. Their duties and responsibilities don’t stop. Their duties are just imbued with a calm pleasure.
Fall draws on the concept of hygge. Hygge is not just about comfort – it’s the theory around what creates comfort: the semi-permeable membrane of of inclusivity. There is something that is not let in – chaos, noise, tiresome requirements of us.
Contentment is not cinematic in most cases, or even necessarily interesting to outsiders
The ushering in of silence, the formation of semi-permeable membranes that keep us in – not as prisons, but as an embryonic protection from which we can freely pass to and from.
Communal Magic 
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