Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams - "Blurred Lines"

This summer was shitty, right? We can talk about this now that we're far enough out? I don't mean a metaphor when I say the badness of things was literally in the air - this kind of heinous low-pressure trough that trailed after us post-winter, latched itself quietly to the sky above our cities and stayed there from May through last week. I know I'm not making this up; I have done a straw poll and the only people I know who count their this-summer as exceptional managed it purely through travel, velocity, working their way out to the edges of the country. (Bad summers are cellphone reception; in the city they're part of the air, but the further away from the centre of things you are able to travel they slip away, out, by degrees.)

But for everyone else, I'm convinced, this whole season was nothing. Like, not even apocalyptic, not the worst summer ever - where at least if it was that you would get to be overwhelmed, fall apart, cry in public, feel the whole world bend around itself and fold in toward your problems for a minute, be a mess, fast, unfixable. Not even like that. This summer the best thing that could happen to you was that your basement didn't flood or that it did but just the once; you did not get to go on an amazing road trip but maybe you got to experience some personal growth; you did not fall in love like someone had pushed you down an escalator but you did take the new job and really learn a lot, really got some stuff under your belt. It wasn't the Beach Boys with the windows down, it was that every time you tried to take a nap some asshole would drive past your sublet blasting that song with the bassline that sounds like a lame dad joke and eventually you just had to close the window so you could stop thinking for ten minutes before it was time to get up and do the next thing. A bridge between winter and winter and nothing got broken.

Yesterday in Toronto it got hot again - the kind of summer-hot where just going outside and inhaling feels like you've wrapped your lips around the exhaust pipe of an idling bus - and even that seemed like a cruel trick, because yesterday was a Tuesday, and today was a Wednesday, and now it's raining, and now it's the nighttime, and by the time this goes up online it probably won't even be Wednesday anymore. What kind of fucking exuberant, life-embracing thing can you do on a Wednesday in September? Eat a nice lunch? Hydrate better? At this point the whole thing just feels more like attrition. Winter is coming and going to be soon, and forever, the same as it always is. There is nothing to be gained in trying to get the jump on things or by pretending. Out there they are already lying in wait for us - making beautiful anthems for our difficulties in advance, or trying to trick us into liking uninteresting things that sound like a room where a few slightly interesting things that we know are all echoing off each other. That's the theme, maybe - this summer, the music, the ghosts of good things. I don't really know what to do about all of this, honestly, except all the same boring shit I was doing all summer - buy some fall boots, fold my laundry, brace slightly, return the boots because they've got too much of a heel. They can't, as they say, all be winners, but still you can aspire. Call this one a draw, maybe, sweep the floor of your kitchen, update your calendar, remember to take out the recycling, but also play this as loud as you can in your car. The right bass line as tiny protest, corrective, for now. The next one will be better, possibly. Anyway. You've got to start somewhere.

Marvin Gaye - "Got To Give It Up.mp3"