The summer of 2020 already feels like a ghost.
Hollow, ephemeral, transparent – like the strange way airs seems to bend above hot asphalt.
Is it all really happening like this? I find myself wondering… is it all really unfolding this way?
And then I feel the sting of a mosquito or the slice of razor grass and those little pains indicate that yes, I’m still alive, yes, we are still living, yes, life is still happening with all its minor annoyances and hurts.
Without a summer party theme, we traverse a season rudderless, floating adrift without the guidance of a get-together, and maybe that’s why everything feels a little lost.
And so, let us play some music. To make a memory, to make the moment matter, to demarcate this time in a happier way than news reports or school worries or office video conferences. This is Oscar Patterson and his ‘Backyard Blues’ from ‘A Summer in Munich.’
It joins our other summer songs from 2020 such as ‘Starry, Starry Night‘ which kicked the season off to an uncertain and somber start, as well as ‘Second Night of Summer‘ which pretty much explains itself. Summer makes music sound better somehow; I can’t explain it any other way. This year, songs take on a different gleam, shimmering in moments mostly of solitude, and in all honesty, there is more silence that informs this particular season than music. There is something telling in that. Telling, and peaceful, and welcome. We needed the break. The world needed it. To get better.
We are not there yet. And so, let us fill this summer day with more music.
Bobby Hutchinson and ‘Recorda Me’ give us some summer soundtrack solace, for when the summer nights wrap their warm winds around the shoulders, leaving sweet invisible kisses and whispers of sweeter days.
This is music as perfect for a sunny day by the pool as for a cool and rainy night hinting at the fall to come. It works both ways, touching on all emotional extremes, allowing for myriad interpretations and moods. And what is summer but one grandly elaborate mood? In this year, perhaps more than any other, the moods are variable and wild, swinging and shifting, tempered by the sun or trampled by the rain.
Sunlight, water, and wind play in the pools of a backyard summer, wishing their way around the world in a single day.
