For the last 41 years I have had a one second summer vacation, right at the beginning of the season. I uncontrollably smile, my whole body relaxes, and I look so forward to eight to twelve weeks of sleeping late and watching Captain Kangaroo every morning while eating cereal for both breakfast and lunch, reading books in three hour long stretches. enjoying a popsicle from the freezer after a full day’s work cutting the grass (and hand trimming around the front steps), then lying on a blanket atop the living room floor listening to entire albums while sipping ice water through a Silly Straw™ from an absurdly gigantic plastic “cup” that I get to purchase every year from the 7-11™.
One-one thousand. Then it’s over. It’s just a feeling I get to have once a year. I only had one actual summer like that, but it was great. Once I could drive (15 in Kansas City) I started working as a stage performer at the local theme park. These were gigantic revues with elaborate sets and costumes, and for the first two years a full live band, for six shows a day.
I had tap shoes. I still have tap shoes, safe beneath the bed, where they cannot offer anyone the false impression that they could, while attached to me, offer a consistently rhythmic percussive experience of any kind. (I do a great jazz hand, though.) So that was three summers in row.
Then I was a tour guide at Universal Studios in LA (The audition was talking. You had to riff for 20 minutes. They hired me two weeks early.)
And then a record store the next year, and then I was out of college, where summers seemed to disappear, split between Elder Spring and Nascent Fall. Dangit.
Am I whining? I apologize, it’s just that I worked somewhere for many years where I earned 6 weeks vacation per year, plus personal days and sick days and holidays. I could have been a guest star. Now, I’ve decided to amend my retirement by doing something I care about, and vacation time is down to two weeks again. Actually, not even two weeks, it’s like, 56 hours. A bit of a shock.
I don’t need MORE vacation as much as a certain style of vacation.
Ok, more is better, yes, I see that clearly now that I’ve written it down.
But I find that, despite my Tardis talk, I don’t want to travel through time so much as slow it down. There are fun and relaxing things to do, and if I’m wistful for summers past I can certainly lay on the floor and drink water through a straw; for goodness sake, that’s both delightful and economical.
I found a video of my daughter and I sorting LEGO. She was six. It was a basket of every shape, size, and color imaginable; we transferred them into an old makeup case while listening to a compilation of guitar heroes on vinyl from Third Man Records. I taught her how to spell “Johnny Cash”. She kept correcting me when I put brown LEGO in the tan section.
It’s 11 minutes long. It’s incredibly relaxing to watch it, it’s ME S M R, very vacationy. I think it qualifies as a Treasured Moment, which are rare, and I am hungry for them, as we all are, but I don’t want to gobble them up…I want to savor them. Slow it all down.
So allow me to present SUMMER REPLACEMENT SERIES, a collection of artworks I’ve never been able to properly share due to lack of logistics, technology, and principally, time. It’s a variety show of sorts, imbued with the spirit of experimentation and questionable programming choices that brought the world both Sonny and Cher and Pink Lady and Jeff, both of whom we’ll be discussing.
Not a 180, just a little shift, like a limited time flavor of coffee, or fiddleheads. Seasonal, if not artisanal. It also gives me a little time to recharge and gird up. I very much appreciate your time, and as the days get warmer (or colder in the Southern hemisphere…that always twists my brain a bit).
I hope these will be refreshing breaks. Or warm, cozy cups of cocoa, if you’re in New Zealand.
[See, that really is confusing: I’m sure I’d show up there in July and be the only idiot on the beach…
…in the snow.]
Thank you for your time.
one one thousand