Summer Echoes
With the lengthening of days and warming of temperatures, sound seems to mutate from the dull and tinny silence of winter into a presence that encapsulates the very essence of summer.
I have often wondered whether the heat itself does somehow work to compress and expand summer noises, so that the murmurings of this nostalgic season become fuller and more apparent; swollen with the thick, hot, breath of life that is now creeping out of doors.
Summer has arrived when one can wander down a suburban road, or lay on top of the duvet with the window open, and know at which point you lie in the calender by simply staying still and listening. A distant car, a lawn mower, road works, a bee, a bike chain whirring, an aeroplane….some bored kid pissing off their parent. All somehow louder than they had been before.
The cacophony becomes melodious, bringing with it a familiarity wrought from those same experiences which have been relived over decades and centuries. I remember the feeling of straight-leg jeans and cotton t-shirts over warm, flat-chested skin. Hot brick beneath cold thighs and the damp cool of the earth that sits around the bottom of trees.
