Most summers begin with a celebratory bang – an explosion of color and sound, vibrant and brash, bold and brilliant – heralding the season of fun in the sun. Last summer’s Coquette theme was an instant classic, one that could never be duplicated. It was perfectly of the moment, and like all perfect moments, it wasn’t destined to last. Summer is like that.
This summer is decidedly quieter, with a much more loose and laid-back theme: Island. It begins with a delicate piano version of Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ which concludes with a Bach Prelude, signaling an end and a beginning at once – the way summer sometimes demands two things at the same time, tugging at the heart while wreaking havoc with the head.
It sets the tone and the atmosphere for our Island theme – which is fluid, languid, and free. It is relief and release, the way you once felt after the last day of school, when you could throw your binders and pencils away and pretend summer was going to last forever, because it felt like it could. There’s also an adventurous aspect to it, with the mysteries that often accompany a summer’s duration. When I was in school, and summer finally arrived, I’d select one classic to read – something like ‘Treasure Island’ to take me out of the doldrums of Amsterdam, NY. When your mind is your passport, you can go absolutely anywhere. Won’t you come along for our island adventures?
“Before us, over the tree tops, we behold a great field of open sea to the East. Sheer above us rose single pines, black with precipices. There was no sound but that of the distant breakers, mounting from all around, and the chirp of countless insects in the brush. Not a man, not a sail upon the sea; the very largeness of the view increased the sense of solitude.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Treasure Island’
