My summers always have this uncanny sense to them. I feel like I am supposed to be doing something, or be somewhere, or have some type of plans. I feel like I should feel busy. And when I don’t, my sense of time languishes and can turn hazy. Memories, flickering heat waves coming up off a hot car, the future, a horizon too bright to distinguish individual paths. It is no one’s most focused time of year.
The feeling of being out of place is, in my theory, a sort of post-partum depression held over from our summer breaks from school. Someone told me that you don’t get a “last summer”. One year you simply cross that threshold, and your reality of summer no longer matches the pattern you’ve been used to. No more aimless days walking places with friends, no cars between us. No more of the quick trips to the beach to see the sun rise once you have an old Oldsmobile.
A few years ago now, I was having a bad summer. My air conditioning situation was not ideal, a lot of things in my life were seeming very strange. I wasn’t sleeping very well. I couldn’t reconcile my past summer experiences with the one I was going through. But I was discovering and revisiting a lot of music that I loved, and that helped me feel grounded. And after a few months, I had a really large selection of songs and records that were just doin’ it for me. Compiled into a list, the songs all fit pretty well together, and a pattern became apparent. Not only did the songs ebb and flow in an especially pleasing way, but each piece was somehow imbued with a sense of nostalgia, or longing, or wistfulness.
I became obsessed with these songs, and making them into the most perfect mix they could be. I didn’t know why. I am not a DJ, and I did not really have any clear forum in which to share this concoction, but I couldn’t stop rearranging them, adding and deleting any song that didn’t serve its purpose. Three nights I was awake long after dark and facing a screen, listening to each piece in the context of the whole, trying to imagine it all as a movie with different acts or a symphony with different movements. My time invested and boredom circled one another, and pushed me to finish this thing I did not see a use for.
It did get finished. And I listened to it repeatedly. I would put it on at parties. I sent it to friends. Everyone seemed to like it. But I never made another one, and part of me doubts that I could. Finding so much beautiful music was immensely satisfying, and sharing it with people was almost as good. But I do not think I could make another collection of music like that one, because art of a certain craft, caliber, and summery-ness exists in our world in the way that gold and gemstones do. It is the scarcity which makes it special, and special things are happening all the time, but you are only one person and your proximity to any one is not guaranteed. I am just encouraging you to develop your interests, and be in the right places, and wait.
A few years between me and myself back then, I continue to find music that I feel passionate about. But summer pulls out a lot of those same feelings year after year, and I found that compilation the other day and it felt like a letter from myself. It was a wormhole through time; through three years, and three days. It was finished August 6th, 2012, and on August 9th, 2015, I heard it again. And there were some things that I winced at, a bit, and some songs I was tired of, but overall it was exactly what I needed. A soundtrack to the summertime blues.
Here, you can see for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/o8zyaqq
Be advised- there is some brief foul language. It is a huge download because I don’t believe in streaming music, but if you absolutely have to stream, then use this http://tinyurl.com/qzd2hv6
If anyone would like to swap mixes or compilations, you can email Josiah. He will maybe talk your ear off about music. Even some country and disco. No polka please.