“Every summer I fight the dream of running away.”
Sometimes a line sticks with you. I wrote that in a heartbeat years ago, submitting one of the old band’s tunes to some sort of early-internet promotional vehicle, a sure path to stardom made possible by the new magic of the Mp3! They needed a one-line description to go with the upload, and that’s what popped out.
The song was called “Summertime #2,” so christened as we’d already written a “Summertime #1.” Good stuff, still holds up in my rear-view-ear. (Feel free to dig ’em up on Spotify, where dreams need never die.) It was one of the closest things that we had to a love song, about road-trippin’ with your baby and cranking up the radio. I wish I could take credit for our lyrics, but I was just there to play hot-licks and strut about. I will, however, claim that line. No, it didn’t help us move the promised million units, but it was an honest moment, all me. Forever true.
I’m still a giddy little kid when it comes to summer, still believe that there’s a final school-bell in the sky just waiting to be rung. Sometime in every July I find myself wondering when it’s going to happen, when vacation’s coming, surprised that the responsibilities never end. But forty-odd summers later the over-scheduled truth’s kicked in once again: summer’s a lie. It’s just a season like any other, and though still-bright evenings linger, the days are never really any longer.
Once again I’ve fought the dream. Once again I’ve won.
By now I’ve gotten really good at it, this dream-pummelling. Too good actually. What was once a fearsome urge–a reckless temptation demanding prayerful, tearful deliverance–now looks more like a lost cause, a noble ambition that could use some life-support, a blood transfusion. Now it’s the dreams that are running away, and for good reason. I’m the fist-waving old man scaring them off.
As I sit here facing another September, surrounded by half-writ works and half-used gear, I’m thinking that maybe it’s time to change it up, dream a little every day instead of holding onto the fantasy that somewhere out there’s a place where the surf’s always up and the sun’s never setting. Someplace where all good things come free and easy, and blank pages magically turn into prize-winning prose.
So then:
Let’s do something! Last week was Labor Day, the Monday off that unofficially puts the cork back in summer’s bottle, and no matter how old and wise I become, it will always be a heart-breaking holiday. In conflicted celebration I’ve recorded yet another summertime song for you. This one’s the Gershwin tune, the one you’ve heard a thousand times before. But this time I did my best to break it, cranking up a few old tube amps to the window-shaking, teeth-rattling, neighbor-baiting edge.
Apologies to the grown-ups, but my inner-kid had a lot of fun doing that. I think he needed it.
Enjoy, and may the living be easy:
A: A great read. I’m right there with you.
B: I had no idea NSA was on Spotify.
C: You sound great.