The Light

I know, I know, this newsletter is ostensibly about music, but have you noticed the light?

Not the one from the Led Zeppelin song, but the one outside.

Every summer, it's on one specific day, at least here in Southern California, where the light changes. Oh, I know that's not how it works, that the angle of the earth to the sun is constantly changing, but for some reason there's one specific day it becomes noticeable, and then you realize fall is coming.

Fall is so different from summer. Everybody's so serious, buckling down and making everything count by Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the year ends. After that, after the January doldrums, it's a rebirth.

But now the world is dying.

And you realize all the hopes and dreams you had for the summer are being extinguished. That it'll be another year before you make it to Glacier National Park, before you go hiking in the Sawtooths.

Those are two of my personal desires. Along with a trip to Monument Valley. And maybe Bryce and Zion.

I wonder if I'm going to see them all before I die.

Oh, I don't plan on leaving this mortal coil anytime soon, but you wake up one day and you realize you're never going to do it all. That if you go to a place more than once, it just means you don't have time to go someplace else. The curtain starts to fall and opportunities evaporate. When you're young you want to eat the entire world alive, when you're old you realize you're lucky if you can chew a piece.

And when you're young the summer is an eternity.

But as you age it slides by so fast that if you don't stop and take it all in, you miss it.

When I was tyke, I went to the beach with my mom. I remember cutting my hand on a rusty pail and seeing so much blood I was afraid to show her, figuring she'd take me for stitches.

She did.

Then I went to day camp. At the JCC. In Stepney, Connecticut. We sang songs on the bus, remember "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt"? That's my name too!

Then overnight camp. Where I experienced my first romance.

And before long summer meant work. It was all about nights and weekends.

And now, it's just a season.

But when it passes, I die a bit inside. Knowing that this routine is not going to go on forever. That there will come a point where the world will turn without me. There will be new kids who believe summer is long enough to be bored, not realizing those days will fade and never come back.

So I say goodbye to the long days.

So long to those memories of "Goodbye Columbus," with Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw playing tennis in the near dark.

So long to those nights without a jacket.

So long to the days when a summer song was actually about the summer.

So long to the days when school never ever started before Labor Day and the last week of August was a time of relaxation and personal collection, buying the new records, getting ready for seriousness.

And so long to the optimism of the summer.

The Beach Boys said it meant new love.

Jan & Dean implored us to go to Surf City.

And we went to the shows and ogled our generation without a care in the world, believing it would last forever.

But it won't.


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