Late in the summer of Covid
So here we sit, where we've been sitting for half a year. The wildfire smoke is coming through the walls. The air outside is so foul that we can't leave the house.
Even if we did, we couldn't go inside any other building without our face masks on. And even if we went somewhere, chances are that it would be closed, perhaps never to reopen. Sheesh.
How does it feel? Not terrible, all things considered. I don't feel resentment, or grief. Maybe I'm just numb to those sensations at this point. Maybe they'll come out later.
But here in the smoke and the dark, mostly I'm thinking how good we had it not that long ago. Before all of this. How nice it would be to go back, just for an afternoon, to when the sky was blue and everything was open and we could go there without a second thought.
Somehow, we found things to complain about in those days. We sat around moping when we didn't have to. We didn't know how good we had it.
I hope we make it out of this. To the hard rains and the vaccinations. We can walk out into fresh air and sit down in a crowded joint, right next to friends and strangers. Give people a hug. Leave a good tip.
Future self had better have a different attitude from past self. In the meantime, present self says, hope.
Jack, I'll give you something to feel hopeful about: Springsteen just dropped a new single called "Letter to You" and the album comes out in October. The sound is incredible - they recorded the whole thing live in 5 days and the band is at some new kind of emotional level. The bleakness of these times may have translated into additional musical greatness. I just checked out the title track and the drum fills are mesmerizing. The guitar sounds are sublime. As you know, recording in the studio live is how they used to do it back with Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, etc...There's something extremely intense when everything counts the first time. It's a musical camaraderie. There's no going back later by yourself and fixing it in the mix. It's either a perfect take or it's discarded so it's exciting to hear everyone in the band coming through.
ReplyDeleteThere are subtle differences in the Apple Music version, and the higher bitrate version released on Tidal. You have to ramp the volume up a bit on Tidal to hear the incredible precision of the recording. On Apple, the version is streamed louder and it sounds a trifle muddier. Bruce’s vocals are clearer (to me) on Tidal.
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