Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and marmalade skies Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
John Lennon, of course. Lucy in the Sky.
Meter to me is unattainable. I can hear it, I’m sure I like it, I just can’t grasp it. It would take a whole lot of focus and concentration for me to get it. Hence, I leave it to the professionals.
John Lennon would have been 81 tomorrow, and Lucy in the Sky begins with one of my favorite lines of all time.
I want to get caught in the spirit of some idea or words and write something that feels like the ocean, like lightning in the distance, like something glorious. Like the lights that shimmer off ordinary plants after a rain.
Why are clouds so much more when they hover above the open sea? Something about the color of the ocean and the blue sky and summer cotton clouds, ahead, above, and all around. The sky and the ocean, similarly infinities.
Someone’s gazing at clouds from a spot on the shore, and I wish it was me. I can almost feel it now. And I wish it was me.
There should be a checklist. Fireflies. Fireworks. A spectacular storm that doesn’t bring down any trees. Coffee on a fresh morning after it’s rained. A walk on the beach. A walk in the woods. Staking tomatoes. Watering plants. Treading water and lazy laughs with friends. Snapdragons. Dragonflies. Bugs and muggy nights.
The confluence? July 23rd. An evening outside when there’s still more than a few fireflies, and already, crickets chirp, as if to announce a movement towards August. Surrounded by a blend of scents from the plants I love. It’s happened before, evenings like this, and I ponder which plants disperse that heavenly fragrance.
Inside, pink coneflower cuttings drop pollen on the countertop. As my cloth wipes away the yellow powder, I detect a floral scent. Not an overdone designer aroma. But the real-deal pollen floral scent.
Some golden bits of summer to store up, as if I’m capable, and hold for some lifeless November afternoon.
Just past the familiar, and the strange parameters of where you are. It’s a memory you can’t quite remember, a feeling you can’t figure out, and frightening abstract waters rush the subconscious.
The air’s breathless, the space…motionless. Sun, pavement, and distant drums. Full-voiced percussion, like a jacked up truck, radio blasting. It’s a summer parade and the pressing crowd around me surrounds me. Would it look silly if I turn and run?
The drums. Yes…the drums. That joke about clowns? Okay, we get it. But who’s freaked out by drums?
They advance now…the drums…and the resonance closes in. Uneasiness ricochets about the hollow of my chest. Anomalous somatic energy, and a spastic, weirdly thready, response. Distressing spectrotemporal interdiction, riveting normal precious regulated cardiac rhythms.
Dissonance. Internal physical dissonance.
The sun’s beating down, and the drums…they’ve only arrived. It’s not déjà vu. But it’s happened before.
No one else feels that? Apparently not.
A discernable commanding hum echoes discomfort within me. A tug of war. A battle of nerves. A competition as old as humans…fight and flight or rest and digest. Or just some acoustic oddity, in which the encompassing rhythms of those pounding drums drown out the life-sustaining silent pulse of my seemingly absent heartbeat. I’m standing. The system must be working, right? It’s a minute, scarcely a minute. Can’t I stand and breathe, hold fast and breathe, one short minute, or can’t I hold my breath, and wait, patient, wait for them to pass?
The sun’s beating down, the clamor of flashy color surrounds me, and columns of noise and noise and noise approach, now, right in front of me.
The distressing crescendo. The tipping point. And then.
Then, the dazzling procession moves along, and a restorative transition falls into place, as it should, in a quiet, effortless, intuitive pattern.
Like the waning end of a thundering storm, the metrics of summer, a day in the sun, and the vanishing hum of distant drums.
Da da dum da dum da dum. Da da dum.
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This is an odd piece I drafted a few years ago. I pull it out from time to time and play at it. It sounds fictional, but it describes a physical reaction I’ve experienced, yes, to drums.
It would be remiss to remember his words without remembering his image. Pearl buttons, ruffled collar, and head-to-toe fair weather clouds. An impish grin, big brown eyes, and a medley of style and spirit, working like a magnet to draw you in.
Ready?
One, Two, One, two, three, four. Yeah. Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing But different than the day before. That’s when I saw her, ooh, I saw her. She walked in through the out door, out door. She wore a raspberry beret. The kind you find at a second hand store.
A video popped up for me the other day. It was an event honoring George Harrison. Prince and Tom Petty were among many musicians performing George’s song, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. What a great performance by Prince.
Prince…Tom Petty…George Harrison…John Prine…John Lennon…Janis Jopin…they weren’t all there, of course, but such great talents gone too soon.
Some of this is a re-post, more or less. You can’t help but remember Prince this time of year.
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Image and lyrics from Raspberry Beret by Prince & The Revolution (1985).
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