Summer often opens portals to the past, leading us down corridors of memory where the scent of a peony or mockorange stuns us into our youth again. It’s a gloriously disconcerting thing when it happens, nostalgia mingled with yearning, mourning coupled with celebratory glee – all that once was now finished and over, and only the memories of certain events and feelings remain, growing ever-faded by each passing year.
Fever dream high in the quiet of the nightYou know that I caught itBad, bad boyShiny toy with a priceYou know that I bought it
Killing me slow, out the windowI’m always waiting for you to be waiting belowDevils roll the dice, angels roll their eyesWhat doesn’t kill me makes me want you more
Summer seems to hit differently that way, our memories somehow more succinct and holding more powerful sway over our present than anything we might recall from a cold stale winter. Maybe they mean more and last longer because we want summer to do the same. All that drama is neatly encapsulated in this simple pop song by Taylor Swift rather tritely entitled ‘Cruel Summer’.
And it’s new, the shape of your bodyIt’s blue, the feeling I’ve gotAnd it’s ooh, whoa, ohIt’s a cruel summerIt’s cool, that’s what I tell ’emNo rules in breakable heavenBut ooh, whoa ohIt’s a cruel summerWith you
Many a Swiftie considers the bridge in ‘Cruel Summer’ to be one of her best, and my niece confirmed this as she all but shouted out the lyrics when it hit. (Not sure how much experience a 13-year-old has had being drunk in the backseat of a car, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) The notion of summer being cruel has long been a delicious juxtaposition of the sunny season and anything that happens to go wrong during that time. (And there is more than one song that takes the ‘Cruel Summer’ title.) I too adore that kind of tension – it lends a gravitas to summer that its more celebrated lightness and frivolity tends to obscure.
Hang your head lowIn the glow of the vending machineI’m not dyingYou say that we’ll just screw it up in these trying timesWe’re not trying
So cut the headlights, summer’s a knifeI’m always waiting for you just to cut to the boneDevils roll the dice, angels roll their eyesAnd if I bleed, you’ll be the last to know
Swift adds her own brand of melodrama to a season that often comes rife with enough drama of its own, heightening the effect with images of summer nights and misguided obsessions, sneaking through garden gates and blissfully diving into mistakes with heated abandon. Summer provides the necessary backdrop, and occasional impetus, for all of it to happen, and looking back at summers past we’ve all indulged in such folly and foolishness, such as squeezing into a blue Speedo and baking our skin in the midday sun. Those foibles are silly and minor when you contrast them with the deliberate ransacking of one’s heart, all in an effort to make one summer mean more than it might genuinely merit. Summers can be as much like knives as they are like people – variable, sharp, cutting – and embodying a diabolical beauty and sinister elegance. They can burn or hiss or soothe or wimper, crackling with dry heat or smoldering with fetid humidity. The heat does something to the passion that gets unleashed in the coming months. It messes with the mind. It clouds the judgment. It hazes the sight. Midsummer madness is much more than mere alliteration.
I’m drunk in the back of the carAnd I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (oh)Said, “I’m fine, ” but it wasn’t trueI don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep youAnd I snuck in through the garden gateEvery night that summer just to seal my fate (oh)And I screamed for whatever it’s worth“I love you, ” ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?He looks up grinning like a devil…
A single line of sweat, started by a single bead of liquid, spills down the body, tickling and invoking an involuntary arching of the back. A bumblebee buzzes by in lumbering flight, its fuzzy body dusted by pretty pollen. A wailing cicada ticks away the midpoint of the day. Heat emanates from everywhere, even the shaded spaces, and eventually there is nowhere that provides respite. This is the summer we need. This is the summer we want. This is cruel in the best possible way.
