Adam Lambert is back in a major way, thanks to his latest EP ‘Velvet: Side A’ out now. Lead single ‘Superpower’ is, well, nothing short of super. It’s got a groove and a theme of self-empowerment that simply shines. The funk is strong with this one, so lay it down for a Saturday night out and get your pimp on. Bonus points for that green suit.
A fall night.
Light and shadows, gray across the bed.
Without my glasses, a haze around everything.
This song plays mournfully, then feverishly, in the background.
I bought the CD based on its cover – a colorful, abstract night-time scene of a starry sky, hung with a moon, and up close a black cat. Slightly surreal, slightly serene, it is a lonely slice of whimsy. That appeals to me, despite the fact that I know better. Not unlike a book, a CD’s cover art should never be the basis for purchase. I took a chance, and in one slow and simple chord progression it all sounded worth it.
Since that time, this song has embodied the fall for me, starting out in such peaceful and sublime style, then dotted with bits of storm and flux, unstable systems and restless time signatures before reverting and resolving in relief and exhaustion, an echo of its opening beauty.
Night shadows in an empty room.
The slow cadence of piano notes.
Absence of light, craters of tension.
The mournful hush of my own breathing.
Fall whispers its sinister secrets into an unhearing ear.
I laugh because I don’t know what else to do.
Laughter and a smile the ultimate mask – a layer of protection against those spirits that sense sadness and take up residence there. September was coming soon and now it’s almost gone. All that we have left is the moon. And a vision of a starry night.
Certain songs just make you happy, no matter how much you don’t want to give in to it. I don’t know why we fight it so much sometimes, the simple urge to be happy. It would be so much easier to follow that bliss. Maybe that will be the theme for this fall. It came to mind as this Michael Buble ditty came over the speakers when I was browsing the beautiful wares at Faddegon’s Garden Center. A greenhouse always cheers me up – and has saved many a dismal winter morning. At the end of summer I’m not quite there yet, but the gift section was brimming with good things and the orchids were blooming in the third greenhouse and suddenly my morning was a whole lot better. Surrounding oneself with beauty can have that effect. I highly recommend it.
The summer was almost done but the sun was still shining. This is one of those songs that cheers you up instantly. On its surface it’s just a fun, brass-inflected bop, but underneath it’s ripe for reflection and looking back at the bad things that happened in your life – the ones from which you managed to get away. Mostly because there was no choice, but getting through counts, no matter how you did it or why.
Fall is tricky when it comes to heartache and heartbreak and, if you’re lucky, heartwake – when you fall in love all over again despite your best intentions and most intelligent resolve. It’s infuriatingly seductive that way, how it lulls you in with its first days of warmth – so like summer, so like fun – and before you know it there are flurries and smoke and even if everything is up in flames you feel nothing but cold and numb.
So turn this music up and bop along to all the mistakes we made in the past, to all the times we didn’t know any better, and especially to all the times we did but ignored the right thing to do. It’s a beautiful day, indeed…
Andy is out running his evening errands. The night fell faster than expected, as it is wont to do at this time of the year. I turn on the lamps in the living room. It feels cozier that way. Less lonely. In the air, Shirley Horn sings a sweet lament in this gorgeous song. Maybe September… because it’s such a volatile time of the year. The days can be sweet or salty, depending on the sun, on the wind, on the rain… and the nights are even less predictable. On this one, I listen to the dearly departed Ms. Horn and pour myself an unexpectedly-short glass of whiskey, mostly because I’m not a whiskey guy, and a little of that will go a long way with me at this point. There’s nothing good or noble about holding my liquor anymore. But on this weekend night, it will warm the stomach and tease the soul. And maybe this is what gentlemen do.
Yes, September, you are a tricky sort. So willow-like. So mercurial. So slippery, seductive and silly. So perfect for the sounds of Shirley Horn. Accompanied by a glass of whiskey, and punctuated in the past with a clove cigarette, you are a spicy slice of life. I’ll raise a glass to that: here’s to life. The world seems to want more in September. I mean that in many ways. Love can come easy and hard when summer slips away. Easy to fall. Hard to pick yourself back up.
Once upon a time…
No, that’s quite wrong…
Because it can never be just once. At least, it wasn’t for me.
I would fall repeatedly, over and over, and every September I would do it again. Failed fall romances were my unhappy history. I’d try for spring, and finally find some happiness in summer, but fall was always misery. And mystery. And it wasn’t all bad.
There is still some sun to be had, even at the end of September. There is still some warmth and heat, when the earth soaks in the sunlight and holds onto it with terrible tenacity, when it might be better to just let it go. I love such struggle. I love people more when they try. When faced with the inevitable, which would you do? Fight against it or give in? I’ve always given in. Most of my friends – at least the ones I value most – would fight. That’s why they’re my friends. I’m not that strong.
Yet I have a fondness for September. After all these years, when September stopped stinging so much, when it stopped hurting, I find a sense of solace and resignation in this moody month. We put the gardens to sleep. We put our shorts away. We store the pool towels in the attic and hope to remember where they are in the spring.
Tonight, I step outside. Warmed by the whiskey, I find the coolness of the evening soothing. September and I make our peace. A cricket chirps in the darkness. The moon glows vaguely in the clouds. Andy will be home soon. I step inside.
The Virgo part of me (granted, that’s the main part) is happy and content to have clear lines of demarcation for everything. That includes the season. The exact date of each solstice is of the utmost importance. What else would separate us from the slippery slope leading to chaos and uncertainty? This world is close enough to such peril.
However, I find that with the seasons, such a line is arbitrary at best, and deceptive at worst. Seasons do not change in a single day. There is not a switch that goes on or off with each shift from summer to fall. Those changes are gradual. Some have already begun. The goldenrod is in bloom and has been for a while. Some of the maple leaves have lost their green and are shading toward yellow – the effect is a shade of chartreuse not dissimilar to the way they appear in the spring. Everything comes full circle. We all return to where we began.
Tonight we straddle the line between summer and fall. If it’s the former you favor, do visit our Summer Recap 2019: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. It’s the first summer I’ve been regularly blogging in two years, and it was a sweaty, semi-naked labor of love. If you favor the fall over the heat and haze, stay tuned for a season filled with its heady harvest. Most labors bear fruit at some point… pluck away.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
The current ‘Madame X’ run we have going remains unbroken, as this marks the fifth Madonna Timeline in a row from the latest album. I was just about to suffer from some overplaying fatigue – a danger for any new Madonna album – but this has jolted me into an early Renaissance of celebrating that recent release. This is one of the more intriguing songs on ‘Madame X’ – with an old-world sound and ambivalent lyrics. Madonna returns to the well-tread (perhaps overdone) circle metaphor, but that is the only time when things dip a bit. The sparse arrangement of plucked strings and piano is a slice of atmospheric charm and drama, with searching lyrics that find Madonna ricocheting through time and space, touching on her own history, with a Wizard-of-Oz-like denouement.
In a sunny summer dominated by the ‘Madame X’ album, this was a reminder that summer could go dark, and ruminations on finding oneself could run deep. Self-exploration and self-examination have earned dirty named for themselves in our selfie-obsessed society, but there is room for them when the intent is pure and the goal is noble and genuine.
{Spoiler alert: life is a circle.}
Alone in a strange country… isn’t that everyone at some point? Even if you’ve never left home, there are moments when we all feel like a stranger, even in our own space, even in our native land. We are but visitors on this earth. Transient beings who will be turned over into the earth without much fanfare or remembrance. Not in the grand scheme of things, not in the infinite history of the universe. And such is the danger of ‘Extreme Occident’ if you let it get that far. Such is its beauty, too.
This song was on my summer playlist and it’s a fun little bop. Better than that, it’s a duet with two hot guys. I’m guessing they’re singing about girls, but who knows with Mr. Martin. He is pairing up with Maluma, and together it’s some sweet music.
They add to their hot factor with this lovely summer-sounding duet. It joins ‘Medellin’ as a Maluma-inspired summer track, and it sounds really good. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: summer is not over yet. The bulk of this month is still within its province. Celebrate the sun (and Ricky Martin’s moon) until the very last day…
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
Madonna’s magnificent ‘Madame X’ album ushered in this summer season, which made for some happy music and some gloriously sunny days. How many more Madonna albums will christen a summer? I’m not sure it will happen again. (The quintessential Madonna summer album is, and remains, ‘True Blue’ – but I’d venture that ‘Madame X’ comes close (consider future timeline entries ‘Crazy’, ‘Crave’, and ‘Come Alive’ – all carry an easy-breezy summer vibe.) That leads us to the latest official timeline post: ‘Batuka’ – which joins ‘Future‘ and ‘Killers Who Are Partying‘ as a modern-moment music recollection.
The call-and-response chant that will likely form a rousing portion of her upcoming theatre tour is the best part of ‘Batuka’ – and while the conceit has its limits and repetitive drawbacks, it proves effective enough, and this song gives the ‘Madame X’ album part of its world-music pedigree. The video is a joyous celebration of the beauty that Madonna found in other parts of the world. You have to love her for that, and this one grows on you like some of her best summer music.
SONG #154: ‘Batuka’ – Summer 2019
Summer is for happy songs. Save the cynicism for fall or winter. Save the hope and the glory for spring. But give me a happy song before the summer ends. Give me poetry set to music. Nothing too deep, though. Please. Summer has its secret sorrows and carries its own heartbreak. That’s why it’s important to have sun and music and water that laps at distant shores. Palazzo pants and terry cloth wraps. Sunglasses and sunscreen, and Tom Ford’s ‘Soleil Blanc’. Brightness and shine and summer’s contented sighs.
Some days summer wants only to rain, to blanket the world with a gauzy mantle of clouds and a thick veil of mist. Obscuring the sunny clarity that usually accompanies high noon with a hazy, soft-focus fog, summer likes to play its tricks on the unsuspecting sun-worshipper. Dampening emotion and sidewalks with tears from the sky, it displays another facet of its jewel-like form. See how it sparkles! See how it rends rainbows from raindrops!
Above all else, summer is the fruition of the promise of spring, even when it rains, even when it pours, even when it’s breaking your heart. And so we sing. We sing from the depths of sunny despair, we sing from the heights of crying eaglets, we sing and we dance and we fall to the ground exhausted from our song.
Summer has a weird way of turning things upside down. More than Mercury in retrograde, it bungles the mind, messing with the matter in the head. Maybe it’s the sun – that glorious, vicious, life-giving orb – pulsating and pulling us to it, never quite letting us go, keeping us in orbit, bound forever, circling in the slightest parabolic curve. It brings us back to the past, much as it pushes us ahead. Like a myth, we take our places in the firmament.
Some of us suit up, preparing for battle. Better to go out fighting than waiting to win. A victory of being right is always a valediction of some sort, because who could put up with that for too long? But we won’t give up that easily. The fight rages because the heart knows no reason. Summer fuels the madness. And a summer moon… well, who has a chance? We will ride out in the night…
We build our castle, and I make it as pretty as possible. A spear-studded iron barricade of youth, rusted and entwined with a climbing hydrangea. A glass windowpane, unbroken, and impossible to put together again if it were any other way. Memory rides on the breeze. On humid nights, the old Ko House organ releases scents and molecules from a lifetime ago, when we’d peek around their banister to see if the adults were still by the fire at Christmas. It still carries its song, music like scent, senses placing us back in our childhood. The summer stickiness pulls me back there then jerks me back to the present.
These floors of wood once felt so solid, once felt so secure. They creak now, a bit battered, a bit worn, even a little warped. They’ve seen the seasons, they’ve paced the years. Crumbling into their waves, my body is not what it used to be. It creaks now too. It buckles and cracks and brings pain. It goes down, brittle shell meeting splintered resistance. This will not hold you like the earth. No arms will embrace you. Nothing will give you what you want. Nothing will give you what you need.
A summer fairytale. Why would we ever trust the words of a fairy? And why ever in the summer, of all available points of time? That sun is on the rise. That heat is waiting to ascend. That army is ready to assemble. One crisp white shirt. One suit striped of pin. One tie of silk and elegance. Black belt in leather. A pair of shoes tipped with wings. Armor isn’t just steel and metal mesh. Looks can kill.
The war has always been within. Storms may circle, shots may strike, but the battle for your soul can only be won, or lost, by you. That’s the most difficult battle of all. Usually it’s impossible. Have you ever tried playing chess against yourself? Or any game for that matter. We are our own worst enemies. We know our weaknesses, we know our strengths, we know just where to strike to pierce the most vulnerable piece of heart. We know and so we guard against it, but in doing so we cut off all other aid or support. A self-fulfilling summer prophecy, cut with shards of sunlight and salty sea water.
Maybe it’s time to end this war.
Maybe I can put down my weapons.
Maybe I can put down my hurt.
Maybe I can…
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
I suppose I should be grateful that the worst songs from Madonna’s ‘Madame X’ album are getting thrown out here first, not unlike the way the roll-out happened earlier this year. It will make the cuts to come that much sweeter. This is the dour ‘Killers Who Are Partying’ and the sooner it’s finished, the better. I like the sonics of it but the lyrics are messy and the melody mostly misses. Almost every Madonna album has a head-scratching clunker. (Even ‘Like A Prayer‘ had ‘Act of Contrition‘.) This is the one for the otherwise-excellent ‘Madame X’ opus.
I WILL BE GAY, IF THE GAY ARE BURNED
I’LL BE AFRICA, IF AFRICA IS SHUT DOWN
I WILL BE POOR, IF THE POOR ARE HUMILIATED
I’LL BE A CHILD, IF THE CHILDREN ARE EXPLOITED
I KNOW WHAT I AM
AND I KNOW WHAT I’M NOT
Despite my non-enthusiasm for the song, I’m interested in seeing what Madonna does with this for her Madame X Tour. It’s screaming for drama, and nobody does drama better than Madonna. It may also grow on me. I was playing the album while lounging by the pool and this one was surprisingly effective. Maybe it was the sun and mental meanderings of Portugal. Maybe it was the tequila.
I’LL BE ISLAM, IF ISLAM IS HATED
I’LL BE ISRAEL, IF THEY’RE INCARCERATED
I’LL BE NATIVE INDIAN, IF THE INDIAN HAS BEEN TAKEN
AND I’LL BE A WOMAN, IF SHE’S RAPED AND HER HEART IS BREAKING
I KNOW WHAT I AM (GOD KNOWS WHAT I AM)
AND I KNOW WHAT I’M NOT (AND HE KNOWS WHAT I’M NOT)
DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE? (MM)
WILL WE KNOW WHEN TO STOP?
SONG #153: ‘Killers Who Are Partying’ – Summer 2019
The older I get, the more difficult it is to make new memories, and most of them pale in comparison to the old ones. That’s the beauty and the tragedy of memory. One day, though, the experiences we are having now may be tinged with that rose-colored hindsight of memory and become something better than they are today. Such is the simple scene that came to mind when I played this song by Sia. I’d been playing that album as I floated in the pool for one entire summer, idly turning the pages of a book while trying not to get it wet, then pausing for a stint in the sun and some iced tea. Then I’d return to the water, awkwardly scrambling atop some cheap float that served its sole purpose for a single season.
When my mind wandered from the book to my surroundings, it would also imbue the gentle trajectory of my float’s journey around the pool with fantastical notions of cruise ships stopping at various Ports of Plants – beginning with the Japanese cherry tree, moving through the grove of arborvitae, and rounding the corner of the weeping larch. We’d pause for an excursion through the side garden, beneath the coral bark maple and the climbing hydrangea, before re-boarding and sailing past the potted angel trumpets and feathery-topped papyrus.
The water would push us along to the next stop at the main gardens, where we would disembark for a tour of the shade border, rife with hosta in bloom, Japanese anemones in bud, and Japanese painted ferns in full splendor. A variegated Chinese dogwood still held onto a few of its creamy bracts, while its non-variegated cousins provided welcome shade beneath their handsome green canopies. In the main garden bed, an explosion of fountain grass rose to the sky, matched by the brilliance of a stand of cup plants. The latter hosted butterflies and bees in a busy flower market; one had to look closer and delve deeper to find a lavender-hued lace-cap hydrangea hidden beneath a dogwood and slightly behind the fountain grass. There were some special singe-flowered peonies there too, but they had long since passed their blooming period.
Back in the water, floating over the deep end, we would proceed to the Forest of Ostrich Ferns, which hadn’t quite decided to start their typical scorched decline just yet. A few stalks of Joe Pye weed rose above them, taking advantage of the extra water the ferns got, and the way they shielded the soil from drying out too much. A Korean lilac drifted by, or rather we drifted by the Korean lilac; once in a while it would throw out a welcome re-bloom with the fragrance that brought one back to the very beginning of the summer season. Here we were already a month solidly into it, and that gone too soon.
A stiff upright stand of zebra grass rose behind the pool ladder, then we sailed into the welcome shade of a seven sons’ flower tree, just sending out its late-season buds of sweetness. They would soon open their tiny white blossoms to the giddy intoxication of bees from all over the neighborhood, and as I returned to the spot where my cruise-float began its journey, I was relieved to think there was still much summer to come.
On another song from this album, Sia sang of a sweet potato, bringing to mind the ever-fresh chartreuse shades of the sweet potato vine. There were dark burgundy varieties that some planted to contrast with the lighter green, but I was never a fan. I wanted things to be fresh and bright always, to keep the beginning of summer and not let it deepen too much. There was enough of that on the oak leaves, already deep green and leathery, and the acorns that were forming and just beginning to fall. Ahh, that word. It’s been said. Let us not utter it again.
Back in the pool, there was more summer to be had. My cruise around its perimeter left me dizzy from a sun-baked haze. The undulating water threw shards of reflected sunlight back at my face. There was something disconcerting yet giddy about this in-between state. Between solid and liquid, between light and shadow, between sunlight and water, we rode the little waves as a song about a sweet potato played in the background – a mesmerizing siren call that left the listener doped in a sweet trippy state of aural intoxication.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
The first Madonna Timeline entry from the ‘Madame X’ opus, this is one of my least favorite cuts, and oddly enough one of the first pre-release singles chosen to prime the album. It follows in the reggae-influenced vibe of ‘Unapologetic Bitch’ but resolves the melodic shortcomings of that with a catchy-enough chorus.
It’s a rather dour statement, one that perhaps went with Madonna’s darker frame of mind during the creation of the ‘Madame X’ album. It’s also a collaboration with Quavo, and like most major stars of her caliber, collaborations too often end up deflating and diminishing the power of the individuals that comprise them.
Madonna apparently liked this song enough to use it at her infamous Eurovision performance, where Quavo joined her onstage. While all the ballyhoo seems to be about some missed ‘Like A Prayer‘ notes, the show was an impressive spectacle, and a hint of what might be to come on her Madame X theatre tour. Give me an armored Joan of Arc costume and I’m on board every time. As for ‘Future’, its best bit may be the ‘Don’t Tell Me‘ quote that comes during its transfixing bridge. The rest can bumble into the past.
SONG #152: ‘Future’ – Late Spring 2019
While any smart person would hesitate to proclaim one particular summer their all-time favorite, the summer of 1990 stands out as a definite contender in my life. (2000 and 2010 do as well, for different reasons.) Way back in 1990, I was all of fourteen going on fifteen, but I can still remember more of that summer than I can of anything that happened yesterday.
It began with a first date with a guy, when all I could do was ‘Hold On’ because I didn’t even know what was happening. It continued with the striking of a pose: ‘Vogue.’ It got everyone a little Breathless, because ‘It Must Have Been Love’ before I even knew what love was. Does anyone really know what love is? It saw my friends and I making a trip to the then-Soviet Union ~ around the world and as far away from home as we could possibly be, so we made our own home and somehow I knew that I would be all right. A guy named Rat helped a little too.
It was a summer of wishful thinking and someone would be crowned a king…
I DON’T NEED TO FALL AT YOUR FEET
JUST CAUSE YOU CUT ME TO THE BONE
AND I WON’T MISS THE WAY THAT YOU KISS ME
WE WERE NEVER CARVED IN STONE
IF I DON’T LISTEN TO THE TALK OF THE TOWN
THEN MAYBE I CAN FOOL MYSELF
I’LL GET OVER YOU I KNOW I WILL
I’LL PRETEND MY SHIP’S NOT SINKING
AND I’LL TELL MYSELF I’M OVER YOU
CAUSE I’M THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING
I AM THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING.
I needed someone under me before I could get over them. Yet I was not quite ready to embark or even hope for a romantic quest. When I thought about girls, I wanted to be their friend more than anything else, to be part of their whispered secrets, to exchange silly notes, to be a member of their cloistered spheres and realms of influence. I wanted to BE with them, not to be WITH them. And at such a young age (because once upon a time fourteen was a very young age) I had no interest in anything else.
My feelings for men were more along the lines of desire and ache and want and frustration.
There was so much I didn’t know.
To make up for that, or to impel something ~ anything ~ into happening (such were my soap-operatic leanings) I wished to access the push and pull of this Go West pop song. I wanted the heartache because that would mean I’d had a love to lose. I wanted the break-up pangs of sadness because it would mean I would have had the happiness of romance. I wanted the blues because something in my soul accessed sadness easier than happiness. It might have been fucked up, but I’ve never claimed not to be fucked up.
I REFUSE TO GIVE IN TO MY BLUES
THAT’S HOW IT’S GONNA BE
AND I DENY THE TEARS IN MY EYES
CAUSE I DON’T WANT TO LET YOU SEE
THAT YOU HAVE MADE A HOLE IN MY HEART
AND NOW I’VE GOT TO FOOL MYSELF
I’LL GET OVER YOU I KNOW I WILL
I’LL PRETEND MY SHIP’S NOT SINKING
AND I’LL TELL MYSELF I’M OVER YOU
CAUSE I’M THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING
I AM THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING.
Despite the warning of so many fairy tales, I wasn’t careful with what I wished for. Happily, I didn’t know that then, and I would welcome any bit of emotional flotsam that floated my way, eager for a feeling, for an emotion, for a reckoning… Summer did that to a person.
A fan hums and swivels in the corner. With each sweep of the room roving bands of air push against my face and it’s still not enough. When the heat is this immense and intense the only thing to do is be very still and quiet and think cool thoughts. A languid pop ballad sung by one of the cheesiest groups of all time is good too. Nothing too challenging. Nothing to make you think too hard. Enter ‘Too Much’ by the Spice Girls.
LOVE IS BLIND, AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE
DEEP AND MEANINGLESS, WORDS TO ME
EASY LOVER, I NEED A FRIEND
ROAD TO NOWHERE, TWISTS AND TURNS BUT WILL THIS NEVER END…
On years like this, when spring hardly gave us any sun or warmth, I’m not quite ready to barricade myself against the first little heatwave, if it can even be considered such. Our potted tropical plants are just beginning to unfurl their leaves, when in most other years they’d be in full lush bloom by now. The garden plants have largely caught up, especially in the last couple of weeks, as nature has a way of evening out the particular inconsistencies of an off-year. That said, on especially hot days, even if we haven’t had a lot of them, I find myself retreating into the controlled air-conditioned environment of the house, hunkering down in the dim coolness, where false visions of the world can be found on screen and the artificially-manipulated temperature no longer induces sweat and stickiness.
TOO MUCH OF SOMETHING IS BAD ENOUGH
BUT SOMETHING’S COMING OVER ME TO MAKE ME WONDER
TOO MUCH OF NOTHING IS JUST AS TOUGH
I NEED TO KNOW THE WAY TO FEEL TO KEEP ME SATISFIED
Back in the late 90’s, when I was still in college and between semesters, the summer was an extended staycation, with lots of lounging and lazy do-nothing days. The Spice Girls movie was playing on television, showing them on their tour bus doing some lounging themselves while this song played over the opening. It reflected the enjoyable ennui of summer, when lying around and raising your eyes to the television was more than enough exertion for the day. When at last daylight faded and the sun went hidden behind the other side of the earth, I’d traipse upstairs into the well-lit environs of my bedroom. In my heart swirled enough darkness; I was always seeking the light. There I would loll about on the cool, carpeted floor, reading or perusing magazines until the early hours of the morning. The next round of daylight could never come soon enough. It just felt better when the sun was shining, even if it got too darn hot.
To combat that, I found it best to put on a pop ballad, the cheesier the better, and let it wash over me like the waves from a fan. If you’ve got some sweet ice tea and hard raspberry candies, so much the better.
WHAT PART OF NO DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?
I WANT A MAN NOT A BOY WHO THINKS HE CAN…
