solace | summer playlist

Summer has always felt like freedom to me.

It’s the extravagant amount of light we get from dawn to dusk. It’s watermelon and fresh tomatoes and sweet corn. It’s no school and no responsibilities. It’s releasing my shockingly pale legs from their denim prison just long enough to feel an ounce of deserved shame. It’s fireflies and staying up late because the sun is, and vacations with family.

Of all the seasons, summer is brightest. Maybe for this reason, it feels like it yearns more than the other seasons.

Fall embraces darkness with a blaze of fiery light. Winter slumbers and waits. Spring bursts out in song. But summer never rests. Summer is always moving, always longing for something else, always busy about bringing that something else into fruition here. Summer sees something beautiful on the horizon and wants to be there more than it wants to be here, mowing the lawn or washing the windows or writing the next word. Summer gets to work to bring that something else about, but sometimes misses the point of the present.

I’ve noticed that the collection of poems in the summer section of SOLACE, and likewise, this playlist, have been shaped by these competing states of rest and restlessness.

So here it is, friends: the summer playlist for SOLACE. May we all find rest in the midst of our longings for something more.

(You can pick up a copy of the book at my shop or at Bookshop.org to read along, or check out the spring and winter playlists)

TRACKLIST:

chicago in season iii / Lake Shore Drive (Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah)
julep / Julep (Punch Brothers)
that postmodern crap. / Faith (Bon Iver)
ode to the city / Velours (Anomalie)
kyrie for july fourth / It’s Not Working (The Truth) (Propaganda)
starling / Lose That Light (Folly and the Hunter)
placeless / So Far, So Fast (The National)
chasing heaven / Five (Sleeping at Last)
golf-ball sized hail / Ice Cream (William Fitzsimmons)
three moments: her head in the palm of my hand / Little Flower (Peter Bradley Adams)
three moments: safe no more / Letter to the Editor (J Lind)
three moments: birdless / The Road, the Rocks, and the Weeds (John Mark McMillan)
leech / Transform (Daniel Caesar)
call and response / Good News (Mac Miller)
rainplay / Storms (Nick Box)
quiet / I Am the Antichrist to You (Kishi Bashi)