Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

The circus, of course! That's the distillation of summer and music for me. Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay. The musicians on their little stage under the Big Top would usher in, year after year, the season of long days, lingering twilights with just a soft patch of darkness in the wee, wee hours. In our bit of Ireland Duffy's and later Fossett's Famous used to come through in early June. Up would go the Big Top, and while the big spikes were being hammered in for the ropes to hold the tent, the Fabulous Fakir would be buried in full public view of 100 urchins, to be exhumed three days later. Then, Bom Ba Bom Bom BOM, Dora the trick rider, glorious in her sequined bodice, would transmute, act by act, into Carla the contortionist, then Olga the trapeze queen 100 feet up as the drum rolled and the MC's voice blared, "Ladies and gentlemen, Olga will now attempt, for the first time in Ireland..."

These days circuses have gone upscale, and though I'm sure it's chock-full of great acts I can never quite bring myself to visit Cirque du Soleil, with its intimations of refinement. They probably play Mozart. Circuses to me spell the smell of horses, the crack of the MC's whip, carny music.

It's easier for me to remember the onset of seasons by taste than by sounds. Only this weekend I was prattling away to Barbara about summers in London in the 60s?when you could eat the same meal (salmon trout, asparagus, new potatoes), presented by 30 upper-class girls at 30 different dinner tables for 30 successive nights?when Barbara grew misty-eyed about the summer of '71, spacing out on Hawaii and listening to "Brown Sugar." One of the benefits of being raised in the Bay Area rather than London, SW3.

Well, screw the Rolling Stones, though Barbara did haul me along to the Concord Pavilion a few years ago to hear the Allman Brothers memorably keep the cold night at bay (marijuana was the menu du soir rather than Dr. Hoffman's famous recipe). Summer is the season of cheap tunes, boardwalk or bandstand blare, warm night air after the club's din. Was it late 70s or early 80s that Freddy Fender carried us through night after night of revelry with "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights"? In the old days you could start drinking daiquiris, caipirinhas, Cuba libres, margaritas, screwdrivers, champagne cocktails in mid-May and not let up or touch the ground with any serious intent till early September. Whole summers would drift by boozily, amorously.

These days I work like a dog. Don't we all? Even Jasper the Wonder Dog, on the receiving end of the foregoing simile, has to practice his tricks, and not just lie around in the heat, snapping at flies.

Music is distraction. Early summers in Key West where I spent the mid-80s you could anchor maybe 500 yards off Mallory Dock, watch the crowds waiting for the sunset, listen to music from the carny types panhandling. One evening the crowd could see a fellow in some sort of a rumble or tumble with a girl in a boat. Turned out he was killing her, but no one could hear her cries. A musical cover-up, you could say. In the circuses they'd do it the other way around: music would carry you up to the moment when Olga might fall in the midst of her never-before-attempted, then comes the roll of drums, then the silence as Olga swoops toward her partner's outstretched hands.

BOOM BOOM BOOM. Hear it half a mile away, a kid with his amped-up car stereo, replete with modish monster cable. Summer, the BOOM is louder because the windows are down. Must be up around 120 dBs. It would kill a person with normal acoustic and brain functions.

I step into my local bar and it's karaoke night. Tina, halfway through "Me and Bobby McGee," is uncharacteristically svelte in a black dress with lace top. Her voice is pretty good, even though the video monitor shows her about half a beat behind the backup track.

After an hour of listening to most of my neighbors I finish my third beer and head for home. Here in Humboldt County it is summer, way too soon, goddammit. The rains stopped in April, and turning over the dirt in my garden to plant corn and tomatoes it's already dry a foot down. If it goes on like this, the fire risk by September will be horrifying. It's been years since there was a big fire in our valley and the fuel load in terms of dead timber and dry brush is staggering. A rancher describes to me a famous fire in the 70s, when about 100 square miles ignited almost simultaneously. You couldn't outdrive it, or outride it, any more than you can outrun a grizzly. The rancher describes burning logs sailing through the air, 70 feet up in the heat storm. At least I don't live up in the hills, or at the neck of a canyon full of brush.

Cheap music, summer's sonic nutrient, feels really cheap tonight, even though I love karaoke. I put on Wagner and think of my mother, for whom a serious countenance was incumbent upon anyone listening to serious music. It probably came from her grandmother, a formidable Victorian who spoke 10 languages and considered laughter to be vulgar. I try to be serious and, as the overture to Tristan unwinds, end up feeling melancholy. Even on the most languorous nights summer often has that aftertaste, don't you think?