Sep 2018

What Does Summer Sound Like?

I remember.

When it's hot and no seat is comfortable because your legs stick to the leather, and your job doesn't really feel real because you're not at an office but it's all you have. It's all you had.

Maybe Ryan Farish is playing in the background.

Or maybe it's slightly later on. The Fourth of July is right around the corner and you've been listening to FM-84's Atlas on repeat. It's the '80s all over again. Or at least, it's what you imagine the '80s were like. What you've been told. It's all fuzzy synths and neon and segmented suns of orange and pink and purple.

At the desk where your legs are sticking to the chair and the drawer isn't quite high enough so you always bump your knees, you strain your eyes for the thousandth time working for free because experience pays the bills.

But there's a distraction, someone new that you do it for. You work to feel better about your days. You're not just a stay-at-home guy. You're moving up. You're working hard to work less hard. But it doesn't seem like enough. Not in the face of someone getting paid to do something they like doing. And younger than you. How can you compete? How can you afford to?

But it doesn't seem to matter because that's not important to her. Or so she says. It's hard to tell sometimes because she looks at you with those doe eyes and lies when you ask her what she's thinking. Nothing. Just looking at you. And you buy it because what else are you doing to do?

It's all make-believe. Atlas shimmers through the air on the bedside table, cinematizing the room you call home. It seems too perfect because it is. You're not you. You're the version of you that you've never seen before, the one that can't think straight on his own anymore because the music is too perfect, and you're so lucky, and even though you're not getting paid and your legs are stuck to the seat you feel alive for the first time in so many summers when the heat just drags on and makes the days blur into one long wheeze.

The people who went out so late they were out early aren't so mysterious. What do people do out at 2am? Now you know. And was it worth it? It probably was. You only know once it's all over. Once your feet touch the ground again. Arcade Summer is on. It's what you wanted to be listening to when you fell in love.

It almost was. But all that's left now in the season after next is what you remember.

When its hot and no seat is comfortable because your legs stick to the leather, and your job doesn't really feel real because you're not at an office but it's all you have. It's all you had.

Ryan Farish was on. Spectrum, or maybe 500 Seconds Before Sunset by someone else. Then maybe it was Atlas for the tenth time. You couldn't get enough. And pretty soon that was all there was. The music and her. And they blended so well.

But that's okay. Because what couldn't be mixed could be unmixed. And it was. The leaves turned and the snow fell (some, at least). And the music is by itself, waiting for someone else to mix with, someone else to share.

That's what summer sounds like. Not quite real.

But it was.

And it's okay.

SOUNDTRACK