Fall is the season of pumpkins, pretty leaves and paradox.
The paradox is this: How can a time of the year so closely associated with loss — rivers shrink back, trees shrivel and the sky goes from shout-it-out blue to a dusky brownish-gray or bone-white — be a season of such joyous, riotous richness in the arts?
How can the season of ecological death be so filled with artistic life?
It’s a fact. The phrase “fall arts season” brims with hope and promise, with expectation and excitement. It’s in our bones and in our blood, this forward-facing trait that we demonstrate in months that march along to the autumnal drumbeat: October and November and December.
The people who write about the arts in Chicago for the Tribune feel it too. That’s why even a wry, tough-guy guide to the pop music world such as Greg Kot gets a glint in his eye at the prospect of the fall concert season. Even a been-there, heard-that veteran of the Chicago cabaret scene such as Howard Reich gets jazzed up when the temperature drops. Even the dapper, dignified John von Rhein, the Tribune’s classical music critic, shows a hint of a grin at this time of year.
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Those critics, along with theater critic Chris Jones, film critic Michael Phillips and me, will be trying to figure it all out at 6 p.m. Monday at the Broadway Playhouse. We’ll be passing along our best advice about what’s essential in the fall season in movies, music, plays and books. Before we adjourn for a reception — during which you can tell us why we’re all wet — we’ll be starting arguments and ruffling feathers and rattling cages.
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And we’ll be doing something else as well: Reveling in the mystery of fall’s fecundity, in the uncanny artistic exuberance that bursts forth in a season of obvious physical decay. The solution to this mystery must lie in the long-ago days when we headed off to the first day of school in new shoes, new coat, new hat. Fall means new beginnings, fresh starts, second chances.
Winter’s darkness looms, but nobody cares about that now. We’re too busy marveling at the light.