about a sunrise in July

The sunrise set alight the purring strip of river reaching across to me from the far banks. I felt as though I had for the first time in years the patient attention of some beautiful stranger. But the orange was, I knew, mistaken about me and very soon to pass, and the next week would resume in the bright blur of faces on sidewalks and the dark reluctance of the few fading hours of breathing room inside at night.

about staycations

A "staycation" is not a thing and I would prefer people stop saying it.

Generalized vapidity

An NPR music blog called The Record includes a recent entry about summer songs. The author, a music critic, writes about a certain kind of summer kind of summer song: "Instead of invoking an endless, idealized beach day, such a song resonates within a specific time and place." And then she gets specific:

Not intentionally topical, such songs collide with current events in unexpected ways: a simmering bass line might reflect the oppressiveness of a heat wave, or a confrontational chorus could connect with kids forming a grassroots movement in the street. 

What if the moment's prevailing mood is hard to pin down — sometimes voluble, sometimes glum? I'd call that floating anxiety, the Red Bull-and-vodka delirium of a culture seriously in flux. That's what this summer feels like to me, with the tensions inspired by economic woes, political skirmishes, tragic accidents and true-crime sprees never quite alleviated by the distractions Kardashian weddings and Harry Potter finales provide. It's not a breezy, easy time, even when the weather's nice enough to put the top down.

This does not describe the shared experience of Summer 2011. NPR aired an audio segment on this blog entry today and online I found a short write-up about the segment. This write-up, credited to NPR Staff, negates the original blog entry with this: "Still and all, a summer song is personal. It matters where you spent the past few months, with whom and what kind of memories got made." Exactly.