I’ve been thinking about layering because my housemate moved out and the house has immediately become a living Jenga tower of my possessions — boxes stacked like tectonic plates, shelves half-built like unfinished novels, furniture dragged into corners where it sulks. Paint slopped onto walls in what I can only describe as “chaotic neutral,” coffee rings overlapping on the desk like crop circles. I’ve redecorated in the spirit of excess: maximalism, clashing patterns, wallpaper screaming at the carpet screaming at the curtains screaming at me. It looks like a charity shop married a haunted house in a gorgeous shade of magenta.
And now it’s September, the air sharpening, nights stretching, and I can feel autumn pawing at the windows. Thank fuck. Summer is over — summer with its fascist one-layer policy, bare arms, limp T-shirts, sweat masquerading as style. I hate summer. (Yes, despite writing & publishing a very summery book of poems earlier this year!) You can’t clash patterns in summer, you can’t bury yourself in scarves, you can’t stagger down the street like an overdressed scarecrow. Autumn is salvation. Autumn is coats. Shirt/jumper/scarf/hat/gloves/coat/bigger coat/overcoat/final boss coat. Autumn means becoming furniture with legs, clashing tweed with paisley with leopard print until the neighbours cross the street. Autumn means survival by exaggeration.
And if I’m layering my house and my body, why not my writing? Don’t we all already do it — piling quotes like cushions, metaphors like coats, references like wallpaper over wallpaper over wallpaper? Every layer adds another level of history. A poem is just a coat rack collapsing under ghosts, our references layered over our experiences, our books stacked inside our sentences, our lives mulch beneath the words. An essay is just a trifle: sponge of memory, custard of theory, cream of bullshit & nonsense, fruit of lived experience, more cream, because why not? Words are just coats for other words. Nothing is naked. Every draft is a layer. Every thought is already wearing yesterday’s jumper. Writing is the art of piling until the whole thing topples — and then calling it style. Or at least styling it out and pretending it’s all intentional.
Layering is the only honest art — strip it down and what you find is not essence but absence, not truth but draft, not core but hole. Nakedness is a myth invented by men with too much money and women in minimalist catalogues who have never once stood wildly overdressed on a cobbled street in November. Autumn knows this. Autumn laughs at nakedness. Autumn says: Go on, add another. Add the coat, and then another coat, and then a scarf over the coat, and a jumper under the coat, and an undershirt under the jumper, and another scarf just because, and then forget which skin belongs to which body.
Sherlock-length coats at the ready.
Withnail-length coats at the ready.
Breakfast Club-length coats at the ready.
Interview with the Vampire-length coats at the ready.
The hems drag puddles, collars stink of smoke, linings ferment with mulled wine and last night’s rain, pockets full of cough drops, lint, forgotten lighters. Even the undead wear coats (haven’t you heard? vampires layer).
Blankets too, blankets piling like guilt. Quilts over duvets over throws. One is never enough. Three is barely sufficient. Five and you have entered snuggle-geology: a trilobite of flannel, a fossil of fleece. Beds become strata, beds become archives, beds become museums of all the versions of yourself that once tried to sleep there. And with others, naturally. And unnaturally. Peel back the top and you find last winter’s sweat, the pollen of springs past, an old hair curling like a comma. Beds are not beds but compost heaps, mulch disguised as mattress. Nakedness is impossible.
Food understands. Lasagna, mille-feuille, trifle, baklava, turducken (bird in bird in bird, absurdity feathered). A sandwich is two layers with hunger in between. Add another slice of bread and hunger is elevated into architecture. Club sandwich = hunger’s skyscraper, bread / lettuce / bread / meat / bread / tomato / bread, skewered with a cocktail mast still flying its little flag. Lasagna is cathedral: pasta, sauce, pasta, béchamel, cheese, meat, pasta again — digestion as edible theology. Mille-feuille, literally “a thousand leaves,” language itself conceding defeat: who can count that high? Trifle: sponge soaked in sherry, jelly trembling, custard lapping on top, cream smothering the custard, hundreds and thousands snowing down in barely bite-sized technicolour. Excess disguised as dessert. Every civilisation invents layering in sugar and fat because excess is the only flavour worth remembering.
And art has always layered. Hannah Höch slicing newspapers into ransom notes, cutting bodies into engines, pasting genders onto headlines. Max Ernst raiding encyclopaedias, pasting forests that never existed, monsters that might yet. Collage is layering at its most impolite: scissors as scalpel, glue as seduction, reality as patient. Burroughs, slicing text into strips, rearranging until sense mutters nonsense and nonsense mutters revelation. The cut-up method as coat closet of words — sleeves tangled, collars rubbing until sparks. Giorno looping tape, voice over voice until voice = storm. Gertrude Stein layering roses until roses rot into fabric: “a rose is a rose is a rose.” Not one rose but three roses but infinite roses, whispering through each other.
And music — always layering. Coltrane layering note upon note until horn split open. Parker layering speed until the line collapses into squeal. Gershwin layering jazz onto symphony onto blue note until Rhapsody drips into collage. Miles Davis layering silence as if silence were trumpet. Reich phasing tape loops. Punk guitar distortion on distortion until the song composts. Autumn sounds like jazz: wet streets bassline, damp wool saxophone, wind shrieking clarinet, rain syncopating pavement, too many horns at once.
Literature is nothing but layering. Woolf layering thought on thought, wave on wave, consciousness folded over itself. Kerouac layering speed on speed, scroll running until syntax staggers. Joyce layering myth on pub chatter on advert on gossip, one day in Dublin collapsing into all time. Eliot layering fragments: “these fragments I have shored against my ruins” — ruin on ruin on ruin. Whitman layering multitudes — “I am large, I contain multitudes” — multitudes themselves layers, bodies over bodies, voices over voices, democracy as coat rack collapsing under its own weight. Yeats layering gyres on gyres, widening spirals until falcon and falconer collapse. H.D. layering lyric over epic over myth. Cixous layering body over theory over ink until the page drips milk. Koestenbaum layering aria over theory over gloss until prose becomes trance. Diane di Prima layering howl over howl, Loba as goddess/wolf/woman/primordial-cunt layered into cosmos. Dylan’s Tarantula a prose-poem-graffiti-scroll, layered until the reader staggers drunk. Calvino layering invisible cities until maps dissolve into dream. Borges labyrinth after labyrinth, story inside story. Perec puzzle inside puzzle, absence layered over constraint.
Cities themselves are layered texts. York: Roman wall under medieval lane under Georgian terrace under Victorian soot under Pret a Manger. London: plague pit under Tube under office tower under penthouse. New York: Lenape land under Dutch brick under Broadway neon under glass spire. Walk anywhere and you walk palimpsest. Autumn makes it visible: leaves rot into mulch over cobbles, gold disguising corpse. The street is never surface; it is history piled, layers bleeding through like damp through plaster.
Sex = layering. Always layering. Clothes peeled. Sweat smeared. Saliva layered on lips, moans layered on silence. To peel clothes is to peel onions. To kiss is to layer mouths. To touch is to layer nerves. Orgasms are palimpsests: pleasure / grief / memory / hunger layered until identity collapses. And collapses. And collapses. Until the bodies all sing in electric four-part harmony, thighs in subtle vibration against strings, and making up chords of grace and light. The body itself lasagna: skin / fat / muscle / bone / marrow. The lover a mille-feuille: thousand layers of fear and tenderness and potential abject rot. Sheets layered in fluids, beds layered in ghosts. Sex is collage, cut and paste, tape loop of moans. Every body = archive. Every kiss = haunting.
But layering is lying too. Liar / layer / lair — same mouth, same syllable, letters swapping coats in the dark. Dropping their keys into the bowl and devising the opposite of slim pickings. To layer is to conceal. A coat hides a shiver. A scarf hides a throat (or a multitude of chins!) A cape hides a multitude of sins. Makeup is paint over skin. Skin is cover for muscle. Muscle is cover for bone. History is layered lie — archive rewritten over archive, truth scraped off and replaced, but the old bleeds through, ghosts whispering under gloss. Every palimpsest is haunting. Do you dress appropriately haunted?
Autumn paints death as glamour, rot as carnival. Leaves as corpses but carnival corpses. Cinnamon in air disguises mould. Mushrooms sprout in shelves, gills under gills, a fungal library of decomposition. The forest writes its own collage in silence. Max Ernst rot. Hannah Höch of gills. The air smells like celebration but it is really emotional compost.
Writing is layering, layering is writing. No first draft dies — it lingers under the second, under the third, like wallpaper under new paint. Delete all you like: the ghost remains. The poem is never one voice but choir. The essay is never one idea but argument with itself. Every sentence contradicts or folds back. Every word a rose is a rose is a rose.
And in the end, layering is autumn’s permission. Wear too many coats. Drink too many whiskies. Pile blankets until the bed suffocates. Eat too much trifle. Write too many metaphors. Let them contradict. Let them overlap. Stagger like Withnail across a tearoom tour demanding a selection of wines, coat two sizes too big, sodden, pockets full of receipts and rot. Mulch yourself into art. Admit nothing is bare. Live life layered.
And here the delirium begins, syntax loosening, commas dripping, dashes overused, words composting themselves. Layering is liar is layer is lair is leer is lore is lorelei — slip into slip into slip. Stein’s rose whispering through Whitman’s multitudes through Koestenbaum’s trance through di Prima’s howl through Dylan’s Tarantula scrawl. Coltrane horn splitting, Gershwin’s Rhapsody collaging, Parker squealing, Reich phasing. Words mulching. Sentences breaking. Meaning rotting into mulch.
Everything is everything layered. Nakedness is lie. Essence is absence. Purity is fascism. Layer or freeze. Layer or rot warm. Layer until you can’t tell if you are comforted or suffocated. Autumn insists. Add another. Add another. Add another.
Exercises in Layering
Coco Chanel said: “Take one thing off before you leave the house.” I say: put three more on! Add another scarf, another brooch, another ridiculous pin you found at a charity shop. Jangle when you walk. Let your silhouette be unreadable. Become your own walking wardrobe of an archive.
Write a poem, then write another poem on top of it, without erasing the first. Layer it until it becomes unreadable. Read it aloud and let the voices bleed through. Staple them together. Call the whole thing one piece.
When making a sandwich, ignore restraint. Add another slice of bread, another cheese, another pickle, another sauce. Layer until it collapses. Eat it with both hands.
Collage your day: glue receipts to yesterday’s newspaper, paste today’s headline over last week’s flyer, scribble your own thoughts on top. Carry it folded in your pocket. Add to it tomorrow. Never finish. Zine your entire week.
Dress your writing the way you dress your bed in November. Put down the sheet (draft one). Throw a blanket over it (draft two). Then another (draft three). Then a quilt (edits). Then a coat you forgot you owned (citations). Then a wet scarf found in the garden (inspiration). Sleep under all of it. Let it sweat.
Layer voices: read Whitman, then read Stein aloud over Whitman, then let an interview with Koestenbaum murmur in your headphones, then Dylan rasp Tarantula lines over the din. Record yourself talking over all of them. Play it back. Listen for the ghost in the overlap. Read your poem out loud between edits and layers.
When you go for a walk, wear every coat you own. Carry a bag with three more. Leave a trail of buttons. Become unlocatable under your own fabrics.
Layer light: candles over fairy lights over lamps. Turn them all on. Then switch them off and sit in the dark, where all the layers remain as afterimage.
Layer scents: perfume on cologne on incense on kitchen smoke. Walk into a room like a palimpsest.
Layer names: call yourself one thing in the morning, another by noon, another by night. Answer to all of them. Answer to none.
Layer until you can’t breathe — then add one more. Because autumn demands it. Because nakedness is a lie. Because excess is survival.
So now I leave the pile to you — this heap of coats and quilts and lasagnas and words.
Add your own layer in the comments: another coat, another metaphor, another fragment of art that ferments in autumn’s damp. Let’s make the archive heavier, stranger, warmer. Share this with someone who needs a little excess. Subscribe if you want to keep layering with me all season long — one voice over another, one blanket over another, one wildness stacked on another. Because nothing here is finished, nothing here is bare. The text is only alive when it keeps piling on.
RST xo
I saved this post as total inspiration! I love your humor & descriptions. 😂💛