It’s summer. Time for surf music. Not the Beach Boys, great as they are. Strictly instrumental, crazy guitar and crazier drums.
Listen. Put on your board shorts or bikini or both. Whether in the desert, where the ocean is just a crazy-from-the-heat mirage, or in your bedroom, dance like the fate of the world depended on it. Because it does. Surf’s up!
Confused Birds
These birds are confused
Not angry
Wondering where
The cold winds are.
Exulting in
Extended summer.
What’s time to a bird
Or me?
The line “What’s time to a bird” is borrowed from a favorite joke with a surprisingly philosophical punch line. It goes something like this:
A guy is driving along a country road. He sees a farmer under an oak tree, holding up a pig so the pig can eat acorns. The guy stops. “You know,” the guy says, “it would be a lot easier and take a lot less time if you just shook the tree and let the acorns fall to the ground.” “Maybe,” says the farmer, “but what’s time to a pig?”
More about birds:
In the sky a bird was heard to cry.
Misty morning whisperings and gentle stirring sounds
Belied a deathly silence that lay all around.
Hear the lark and harken to the barking of the dog fox gone to ground.
See the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water.
Grantchester Meadow, Pink Floyd
“Well, then, just what does it mean that everybody has the Buddha Mind?…in the course of listening to my talk, if a dog barks outside the temple, you recognize it as the voice of a dog; if a crow caws, you know it’s a crow…you didn’t come with any preconceived idea that if, while I was talking, there were sounds of dogs and birds, children or grown-ups somewhere outside, you were deliberately going to try to hear them. Yet here in the meeting you recognize the noises of dogs and crows outside and the sounds of people talking… the fact that you recognize these things you didn’t expect to see or hear shows you’re seeing and hearing with the Unborn Buddha Mind.”
From Bankei Zen: Translations from the Record of Bankei
Even a serious (or seriocomic) blog needs a summer break. So here it is.
Driving down the mean streets of a mid-sized American city at midday, it is 92 degrees, hotter than it should be the first week of summer. Not bad, though, with the radio loud but edgeless cool, playing summer songs. Women wait to cross at the corners, long loose print cotton skirts clinging and waving in the breeze, sleeveless tops. This means War.
There’s All Day Music
Music is what we like to play
To soothe your soul, yeah
Down at the beach or party in town
Making love or just riding around
Let’s have a picnic, go to the park
Rolling in the grass till long after dark
And on the flip there’s Summer
Riding round town with all the windows down
Eight track playing all your favorite sounds
The rhythm of the bongos fill the park
The street musicians trying to get a start
Cause it’s summer
Summer time is here
Yes, it’s summer
My time of year
So there are no more eight tracks. So what? The hot songs of summer, girls of summer, boys of summer are forever.
Bob Schwartz 