Category Archives: Music

When Emi was originally entertaining summer theme ideas, she wanted to incorporate some element of Egyptian flair and Cleopatra vibes. We have reached that turn after a Solid Gold start, and our golden glory will thread its way through this Egyptian excursion along the Nile. We begin with a fragrance, as Egyptian as anything we’ll ever conjure here, and in keeping with the lighter touch of Cleopatra aspects. Sur de Nil was reportedly created with the inspiration of the Nile River running tranquilly in the background. It’s a lovely soft beginning for our own Egyptian journey here, which turns the soundtrack around in eclectic fashion worthy of my occasionally-eclectic niece. She takes after her fun Uncle in that way (and several others). And so we tip-toe into the pyramids, into a land of sand and sunlight, heat and papyrus and the sound of water running along like the sole savior it has become.

Do not speak to me of Queens and Kings, whisper only of love and beauty. Crowns and titles never impressed anyone around here, contrary to popular assumption. Still, pomp and circumstance passes the time, and we humans are notoriously in need of entertainment and amusement, so let us aim to enthrall you with this turn on our summer journey. There are palm trees swaying in the warm breeze, and a romantic aspect of night that pulls you along the with the current of the river.

“All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise.” – Cleopatra

The conundrum of summer: such glorious atmosphere, such dark nights, such tease and please and unease. We find a way in the dizzying sunlight, only to forget the path by the time we wake from an afternoon nap. Dangers and delights alike, and no one could ever really tell the difference depending on how the shadows appear. Summer tempting, summer limiting, summer its own diabolical sphinx, impossible to riddle any sort of sense or meaning, and still we yearn, still we strive, still we grasp at the asp intent only on getting out alive, on seeking its own survival.

“I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow- her offers false. I see and know all this.” – Charlotte Bronte

Someone once explained the phenomenon of cloudbusting to me, but I don’t think I fully grasped it. Even after some online seeking, I still don’t feel like I understand it any better. Usually that prompts further research, deeper dives, or the start of a quest – this time I’m content with the mystery, accepting of the lack of understanding, reconciled to the not fully knowing. That’s a new stance for me, and a refreshing one. Removing mystery never did add anything of value to life’s charming aspects – if anything, it made them less charming. Maybe Kate Bush does a better job of explaining without reducing things to a series of dull facts.

I still dream of Orgonon
I wake up crying
You’re making rain
And you’re just in reach
When you and sleep escape me

You’re like my yo-yo that glowed in the dark
What made it special made it dangerous
So I bury it and forget

But every time it rains, you’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen

On top of the world
Looking over the edge
You could see them coming
You looked too small in their big, black car
To be a threat to the men in power

I hid my yo-yo in the garden
I can’t hide you from the government
Oh, God, daddy, I won’t forget

Then again, maybe Kate Bush won’t explain away the riddles, maybe she is only here to posit more questions, raise more doubts, spin more wild stories that go on to spin even more stories from themselves. This song doesn’t even go with our Solid Gold summer theme, but as a wise person once wrote, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. This post doesn’t really go well with summer either – it’s a bit too somber, a bit too serious, a bit too emblematic of the madness attempting to swirl within my head – though I’m doing my damnedest not to let it take control. There is a mindfulness to that which might be my own way out, if I’m to ever get out of this alive. And who ever really gets out of life alive? In the end, I mean.

‘Cause every time it rains you’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen

And every time it rains you’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Look, your son’s coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen

The summer days of my childhood were spent largely outside, swimming and biking and running around the neighborhood. My brother and I would be out of the house by 8 or 9 in the morning and not return until an early dinner time. Then we’d be back out again until the light just started to fade and June bugs swarmed the tops of all the trees. (Both usually drove me home before a shout from my parents.)

Back then we’d just go around to our friend’s houses, using the pool if they had one, or rustling up mischief in their overheated garages or cool and quiet basements. I don’t really recall what exactly we did – which probably meant it was mostly nothing. Kids could entertain themselves back then, without a television or computer or cel phone, and we would become better for it. We learned how to sit still with nothing to do. We learned how to entertain ourselves with nothing around but a bike or a garage of rubbish. We could create endless pool games that were so stupid and fun that the adults had to drag us out to eat lunch or we would have stayed in until our pruny fingers were malnourished. Like most adults, I remember those summer days as filled with glory – and in the 80’s it was literally true.

We pause in this retro summer of Solid Gold 70’s tunes to advance a bit into the 80’s with a Bruce Springsteen classic from his epic ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ album. To come of age at such a time meant Bruce, Michael, Prince and Madonna formed the phenomenal soundtrack to our formative years – and the music you have when you’re growing up is the music that shapes your personhood. Those of us who were children in the 80’s have a very distinctive musical DNA – once removed from disco, twice removed from classic rock, and gorgeously afflicted with the synth pop confections that would only last if they came with a melody. Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’ gave us a rock classic that the whole country embraced, and it rang with a built-in nostalgia that its lyrics so beautifully belied. 

“I HOPE WHEN I GET OLD, I DON’T SIT AROUND THINKING ABOUT IT, BUT I PROBABLY WILL…”

Approaching the first turn of summer then… most times I miss it because there isn’t a dramatic demarcation, rather the slow burn of the warmth into the earth, the sun present and strong even when it’s overcast. The fun turn, when summer is at its zenith near the mid-July glory, when all you see on the horizon and for the foreseeable future is more of summer, and all that is behind you is also summer. A song to begin the bridge to our Middle Eastern-inflected section as proclaimed by my summer theme guide, my niece Emi (she who chose ‘Coquette‘ and ‘Island‘).

The journey home is never too long
Your heart arrives before the train
The journey home is never too long
Some yesterdays always remain

I’m going back to where my heart was light
When my pillow was a ship, I sailed through the night

The journey home is never too long
When open hearts are waiting there
The journey home is never too long
There’s room to love and room to spare
I want to feel the way that I did then
And think my wishes through before I wish again

The idea of home in the summer is transient, like the vacations some of us take, the travels some of us make. It’s an idea more than a place, and as such summer teaches us how to make a home wherever we might be, whenever we may need it. For some of us, home is a family, a spouse, a friend, a lover. For some it is a pet, a house, a tree from our childhood. If you’re one of the lucky ones, home is yourself – a place where you always feel at ease and safe and comforted from the torments of the world. That’s the best sort of home to make – and making peace with yourself means you can feel at home wherever you might be (especially your own backyard).

Not every boat you come across is one you have to take
No, sometimes standing still can be the best move you ever make

Like some paper moon, this bamboo lamp casts a starburst of shadows before a branch of coral bark maple. A scene from the Floating World perhaps, centuries ago, that replays itself in varying versions over all the ensuing years. What remains is the beauty, the lingering sigh, that feeling of being so full you want to squeeze someone’s hand to realize your place is still of this earth. Rainy summer evenings make for some of the saddest times, such gloom at direct odds with the season of the sun. One expects the dreary stuff in fall or winter; summer makes the sting more acute.

This is when we find solace in the interior. This is why we make our rooms as pretty and peaceful as possible. This is where a branch of maple leaves becomes a portal to another century, another place. This is the space where music speaks for longing.

The last thing I want to do is wish the summer away.

Keeping that in mind, I endeavor to embrace the moment, rainy night and everything that goes along with it – the stickiness, the air with enough coolness to give it just an edge, the purgatorial wait until the sun comes up and out again. A rainy summer night is right in its own way, it carries its own beauty hand in hand with its darkness. Still, I yearn for light…

Some songs aren’t messages meant for other people.

Some songs are posted here as a message to myself.

Sometimes I need to be told things, sometimes I need to shut my mouth and listen.

Such is the message of the song at hand. Is it for you? Is it for me? Depends who is going to be the most brutally honest. Summer seers into the mind in this way, positing questions, the most torturous and debilitating questions for anyone the least bit susceptible to hiding behind prettiness and ease and the desire not to disrupt that which isn’t entirely broken down. We have come to accept the very lowest effort and behavior of others when it comes to how we are being treated.

YOU’RE GIVING LEADING ACTOR, YOU WANNA STEAL THE SHOW
SHUT YOUR MOUTH, SHUT YOUR MOUTH, SHUT YOUR MOUTH
YOU LIE WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO, THEY’RE GONNA FIND YOU OUT
SHUT YOUR MOUTH

This latest Madonna song, to be featured in the FIFA World Cup halftime show it seems, is a collab with Feid, and the music propels this onto the field with a propulsive party vibe with a darker edge thanks to the lyrical bombast and indictment. I love dark parties. Especially in the summer. All that drama, all that intrigue, all that unnecessary strife – and on the hottest days of the year to make it so much more unbearable.

I DON’T BELIEVE A WORD THAT YOU SAY
I WONDER IF YOU LIKE IT THIS WAY
I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW

Today Mercury goes into annoying retrograde motion, and there is also a full moon, so welcome to hell at the height of summer. Temperatures are also set to soar up to 100 degrees this week, so my aim is to lay low, keep to the pool and the AC, and lean into my daily meditations lest I lose what little is left of my middle-aged mind. Also, I’m completely out of fucks to give, so should anyone ask for one with annoying nonsense, I won’t be responsible for my response.

READ MY LIPS, TELL IT TO MY FACE
AND YOU CUT ME WITH YOUR LIES
‘CAUSE YOU HURT ME WITH YOUR KISS AND I REALIZE
YOU’RE JUST BROKEN, BROKEN UP INSIDE
BUT I WILL SURVIVE

It’s kind of cruel to tell someone they’re broken and basically tell them to fuck off in the same breath. But maybe cruelty is the kindest way to send certain messages. Madonna has always been one for summer drama, and this week her new album comes out. I’m planning on dancing the Mercury and full moon troubles away…

YOUR FEET MOVE JUST LIKE A DANCER
YOUR SOUL BEATS JUST LIKE A DRUM
TOMORROW HAS ALL THE ANSWERS
TODAY SAYS WE’VE JUST BEGUN…

Catching fifty years of living in this body can sometimes be a jolt, especially when you come upon your visage early in the morning and the light is harsh and the day is new and the sleep has settled into your lines and gray hair. Once in a while, though, in the golden hour’s light and the filtered reflection of a door window, a quick change out of swim trunks following a pool dip reveals a body that is keen on getting healthier, on surviving and thriving, on being something better than it was yesterday. 

DON’T YOU FEEL THE SUN
HOPEFUL HEARTS OF THE HUMAN RACE
SHINING DOWN FROM ABOVE…

Golden hours in summer hit differently than at any other time of the year. The sun is still burning its heat through the air, you can feel it warm your skin. You’re reminded of your golden worth – the way true gold reveals itself in the end – and you suddenly see through all those flimsy gilded superficial wanna-bes void of substance. Their empty, albeit shiny and new, vessels of temptation and flash always out themselves in the end, and if you’ve been smart and careful you never took them too seriously in the first place.

WE’RE GOLDEN
BURN LIKE THE STARS
STAY GOLDEN
STRAIGHT FROM YOUR HEART

Gold can be one’s heart and constitution, or gold can be one’s deceptive covering. Only you can accept and acknowledge which gold you are, because only you in your heart truly know. And we all know, even when we don’t want to admit it to ourselves. We always know. The soul will see to what the brain might try to avoid – and the heart… well, I don’t know why any of us even tries to fool the heart after a certain age. 

WITH A VOICE SAYING, “I’LL NEVER GIVE IN”
GET KNOCKED DOWN, BACK UP AGAIN
WE’RE GOLDEN, GOLDEN
THAT’S WHO WE ARE

Sometimes I forget, and it takes a fleeting glimpse of myself in the glass reflection of a summer afternoon by the pool to remind me of all that I am, the man I’ve worked years to become. Sometimes I have to call a friend and ask them to remind me of who I am, because unlike the way it’s supposed to work, the older I get sometimes the more I doubt myself. My friends are all good enough to oblige on these rare moments of faltering and questioning. They prop me up when, weary and bedraggled, I have those moments of pause. We all have them. 

LIVE YOUR LIFE LIKE YOU’RE STEALING
EVERY LITTLE MOMENT IN TIME
INFINITY GOES ON FOREVER
LAY YOUR LIFE ON THE LINE

DON’T YOU FEEL THE SUN
HOPEFUL HEARTS OF THE HUMAN RACE
WRAPPED IN THE ARMS OF LOVE

Summer brings me back to the little boy I used to be, the boy who had the confidence and power and a belief in himself that he was already all that he needed to be. How strange that as our lives go on, they bring us further and further from the truths with which we are all born. Maybe I’m at the bend of a boomerang, and it’s time to start returning to those childhood truths. There are so many tantalizing ways to veer off our path, so many seductive wolves in granny’s guises, so many illusory traps whispering false words that meant nothing to anyone other than a way to pass the time. Many speak of the folly of youth – when so much more folly follows us into adulthood. Maybe growing up doesn’t involve losing ourselves to adulthood, but rather finding our way back to who we were in the beginning. 

WE’RE NOT YOUNG AND WE’RE NOT OLD
WE’RE THE STORIES NOT YET TOLD
WON’T BE BOUGHT AND CAN’T BE SOLD
WE ARE GOLDEN

When you’re fifty fucking years old, you are officially out of fucks to give.

At least, I fucking am.

All fucks gone.

All fucked out.

Move the fuck on.

Fuck all the fucking way off.

And play this fucking song as loud as you can fucking stand it, because I’m regressing to my teenage dreams in a teenage circus… and if you stick around these parts you’re gonna get something on yourself.

TEENAGE DREAMS IN A TEENAGE CIRCUS
RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CLOWN ON PURPOSE
WHO GIVES A DAMN ABOUT THE FAMILY YOU COME FROM?
NO GIVING UP WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND YOU WANT SOME

RUNNING AROUND AGAIN… RUNNING AROUND AGAIN
RUNNING FROM RUNNING…

WAKING UP IN THE MIDDAY SUN
WHAT’S TO LIVE FOR WHEN YOU COULD SEE WHAT I’VE DONE?
STAYING OUT OF MOTION IN THE LIGHT OF DAY
I WAS HIDING FROM THE THINGS THAT YOU’D SAY

So many f-words, so much vulgarity. Reminds me of a time I was on the bus coming home from religion class of all places. (That’s what comes when you try to make kids religious.) I was in the back of the bus being bad, swearing my ass off with every dirty abominable word I could think of to say out loud and shock my religious classmates after our extra-long Tuesday afternoons when all the non-religious kids got to home early but those of us godly idiots had to go to the run-down Catholic school and pretend to pray and other shit. A lovely nun named Sister Agnes taught us (lovely in spirit, not in the dark bags beneath her eyes). We didn’t buy half of it, we didn’t believe, and behind her back we were atrocious to one another. The furthest thing from whatever goodness they were trying to instill.

WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN

I remember the kids listening to me as I swore – one fuck right after another fuck, and maybe even a c-word slipped in at such a young age. It thrilled me to appall them; even the older kids seemed impressed or horrified, and I would spend the rest of my life confusing the two.

I WAS A BOY AT AN OPEN DOOR, WHY ARE YOU STARING?
DO YOU STIL THINK THAT YOU KNOW?
LOOKING FOR TREASURE IN THE THINGS THAT YOU THREW
LIKE A MAGPIE I LIVE FOR GLITTER NOT YOU

Even then, I understood that I would be the one brave enough to say the things we shouldn’t say out loud. That I would be the one to bear the brunt of childish hubris, the one to burn up from flying too close to the sun. I knew it was my destiny to fall. Lucifer whispered sweet seduction in my boyhood ears, and I listened; dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight to a song like this would become my habit.

WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN

TEENAGE DREAMS IN A TEENAGE CIRCUS
RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CLOWN ON PURPOSE
WHO GIVES A DAMN ABOUT THE FAMILY YOU COME FROM?
NO GIVING UP WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND YOU WANT SOME

As we neared the end of the bus ride, I realized that my voice was the lone voice that was carrying to the front. All my bravado, all my evil words, all my brazen audacity – how much had reached the bus driver’s ears? As we squeaked to a stop and filed out, I suddenly panicked at the idea that the driver had heard what I was so foolishly screaming. I left a healthy length between myself and the kid ahead of me, so that I could rush past the driver in the event that they tried to scold me or say something. Even after I’d hurried by and stepped off the bus, I worried my actions would catch up with me, that a call would come in that night to my parents and I’d be belted for spewing such language from my lips. Religion class might have been working after all – the guilt was wreaking havoc with my head, fucking up any possibility of a carefree childhood.

NOW I’M SITTING ALONE AND I’M LOOKING AROUND
LEFT HERE ON MY OWN, I’M GONNA HURT MYSELF
MAYBE LOSING MY MIND, I’M STILL WONDERING WHY
I HAD TO LET THE WORLD, LET IT BLEED ME DRY

No call came into the house that night. And the next Tuesday afternoon after we finished another religion class, I heard my mouth release another torrent of bad words in the back of the bus, and watched some of the kids again thrill at what they would never have the courage to say or do. I worried a little again at whether the bus driver would finally hear or notice, but again no call came in, no comeuppance. And then all I felt was empty.

WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE, WE ARE
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE, WE ARE
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN…

Stepping slightly aside from the 70’s disco gold sound that opened the season here, on this third day of summer we move into something a little more recent with this song by Harry Styles – this is ‘Golden’ from his album ‘Fine Line’. It speaks to the golden moment of loving someone, letting them know you love them, all while being terrified of getting your heart broken. Summer has barely begun and already the emotions are mixed.

GOLDEN, GOLDEN, GOLDEN AS I OPEN MY EYES

HOLD IT, FOCUS, HOPING, TAKE ME BACK TO THE LIGHT

I KNOW YOU WERE WAY TOO BRIGHT FOR ME

I’M HOPELESS, BROKEN, SO YOU WAIT FOR ME IN THE SKY

YOU’RE SO GOLDEN, YOU’RE SO GOLDEN

I’M OUT OF MY HEAD AND I KNOW THAT YOU’RE SCARED

BECAUSE HEARTS GET BROKEN

I DON’T WANNA BE ALONE, I DON’T WANNA BE ALONE

WHEN IT ENDS

DON’T WANNA LET YOU KNOW I DON’T WANNA BE ALONE

BUT I CAN FEEL IT TAKE A HOLD I CAN FEEL YOU TAKE CONTROL

OF WHO I AM AND ALL I’VE EVER KNOWN

LOVING YOU’S THE ANTIDOTE

Golden is the hour, golden is the time. Golden is the summer, washing the luster away in the rain, because nothing gold can stay. Summer isn’t usually this pessimistic, but this is no ordinary summer. It’s my 50th full summer, and I can finally say I don’t really know what I’m doing. Some say that is the first step to learning anything. It’s a tenet of Buddhism, and the art of not knowing anything means you are fully open to learn of the present moment, allowing you to fully inhabit the time at hand with curiosity – ever seeking knowledge, ever open to learning more. Consider summer school in session.

GOLDEN – YOU’RE SO GOLDEN

I DON’T WANNA BE ALONE

YOU’RE SO GOLDEN, YOU’RE SO GOLDEN

I’M OUT OF MY HEAD AND I KNOW THAT YOU’RE SCARED

BECAUSE HEARTS GET BROKEN

Summer is drama.

Summer is histrionics.

Summer is soap operas and Crystal Light and raspberry hard candy.

You have your summer memories, I have mine. Let’s make a new one together to this classic Donna Summer cover of ‘MacArthur Park’; it fits into the Solid Gold Summer theme rather loosely, as Alysa Liu won her gold medal skating to this song. Consider it gold-adjacent via the Winter Olympics. A campy golden reference that is deceptively at odds with how deep this post may go. For now, let’s get lost in the cheesy drama of a pressed pair of striped pants or a cake being left out in the rain…

SPRING WAS NEVER WAITING FOR US ‘TIL

IT RAN ONE STEP AHEAD AS WE FOLLOWED IN THE DANCE

BETWEEN THE PARTED PAGES WE WERE PRESSED,

IN LOVE’S HOT, FEVERED IRON, LIKE A STRIPED PAIR OF PANTS

MACARTHUR’S PARK IS MELTING IN THE DARK

ALL THE SWEET GREEN ICING FLOWING DOWN

SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN

I DON’T THINK THAT I CAN TAKE IT ‘CAUSE IT TOOK SO LONG TO BAKE IT

AND I’LL NEVER HAVE THAT RECIPE AGAIN

I RECALL THE YELLOW COTTON DRESS

FOAMING LIKE A WAVE ON THE GROUND BENEATH YOUR KNEES

BIRDS LIKE TENDER BABIES IN YOUR HANDS

AND THE OLD MEN PLAYING CHINESE CHECKERS BY THE TREES

There is something both insanely ridiculous and incredibly moving about the words and imagery and music here. When you’re in the throes of heartbreak, when you find yourself suddenly left behind and out of love, you do what you have to do to cope and survive. Sometimes that’s in a cheesy pop song (see ‘Bye Bye Bye’ by N’Sync for how I got over one previous paramour) and sometimes that’s in more probing mind tricks.

MACARTHUR’S PARK IS MELTING IN THE DARK

ALL THE SWEET GREEN ICING FLOWING DOWN

SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN

I DON’T THINK THAT I CAN TAKE IT ‘CAUSE IT TOOK SO LONG TO BAKE IT

AND I’LL NEVER HAVE THAT RECIPE AGAIN

Can you force yourself to feel or not feel things? I used to think you couldn’t force your way out of either of them, but I don’t know if that’s entirely true. So much of life is in our perception and perspective – change those and you change what you might actually feel. Like grieving or lost love. Is it better to allow ourselves to feel all of it, to embrace the sorrow and hurt and get into it, or does that run the risk of diving deeper and possibly irreparably into an everlasting funk? The past few years I’ve leaned into feeling all of it, even when it sucked, even when it hurt, because I understood that burying it all inside wasn’t helpful or healthy.

THERE WILL BE ANOTHER SONG FOR ME AND I WILL SING IT

THERE WILL BE ANOTHER DREAM FOR ME

SOMEONE WILL BRING IT

I WILL DRINK THE WINE WHILE IT IS WARM

AND NEVER LET YOU CATCH ME LOOKING AT THE SUN

AND AFTER ALL THE LOVES OF MY LIFE,

AFTER ALL THE LOVES OF MY LIFE, YOU’LL STILL BE THE ONE

‘Fake it until you make it‘ was how I made it through my college years and early 20’s. Sometimes you have to hang curtains of glistening gold material to hide the scaffolding and machinations behind building the bones and structure of self-worth. I know I can do that – I’ve trained myself to shift my perception and perspective, to coldly and analytically examine my feelings then take them carefully and resolutely apart, rendering them mere sections and segments, bits and parts and pieces of something that once constituted something grander. But do I want to do that anymore? I’m conflicted.

I WILL TAKE MY LIFE INTO MY HANDS AND I WILL USE IT

I WILL WIN THE WORSHIP IN THEIR EYES AND I WILL LOSE IT

I WILL HAVE THE THINGS THAT I DESIRE

AND MY PASSION FLOWS LIKE RIVERS FROM THE SKY

OH AND AFTER ALL THE LOVES OF MY LIFE,

AFTER ALL THE LOVES IN MY LIFE

YOU’LL STILL BE THE ONE AND I’LL ASK MYSELF WHY…

As we embark upon this Solid Gold Summer, it is worth noting that there is nothing solid about summer. There is only irony, hollowness, emptiness – the sheen, the shell, the facade. There is no sure footing here. Every step is perilous and you must watch for slips and falls, cracks and ruin, degradation and destruction like some marble faun sculpture falling to the ground and smashing into pieces. Fake gold, false gods, imitation metal – there is nothing real to this summer. Reality is dead.

Along those lines, there is no such thing as a stable summer either. The atmosphere is too volatile, the conditions too prime for tornadoes and hurricanes – the peaks and valleys too high and too deep for a smooth base of stability or permanence.

There, that’s your first day of summer for you. Hot enough yet?