summer feeling

Yesterday I created a playlist on my iPod and I called it "running." I put 111 songs in it. Today I went for a run listening to the playlist on shuffle and I had one of those random-song-shuffle moments of insight.

It all started predictably uptempo with MIA's "Galang", but then everything got slower and more pensive. I spent a good seven minutes in the Gateful Dead's "Tennessee Jed" and I thought about being young and stoned and wasting a perfectly good sunny day thinking I'd somehow tapped into the knotty-pine spirit of the U.S. The Dead's sound is pleasantly lopsided, and I might think it brilliant if it didn't drag on so damn long. Now that I'm all uptight and snooty, and coffee and nicotine (gum) are my drugs of choice, it seems feels like a soundtrack to a life fittered away, which is still kind of nice now and then.

A couple relatively slow songs later, as the endorphines were really flooding my system, on came Jonathan Richman's "That Summer Feeling", and I slipped into a trance.

Such a true song:

When the cool of the pond makes you drop down on it
When the smell of the lawn makes you flop down on it
When the teenage car gets the cop down on it
That time is here for one more year

And that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life...

When you're hangin around the park with the water fountain
And there's the little girl with the dirty ankles
Because she's on the swings where all the dust is kickin up
And you remember the ankle locket
And the way she flirted with you
For all this time how come?
Well that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

You'll throw away everything for it

It was sunny and cool this afternoon as I ran. Flowers were everywhere, and the birds were chirping when the song ended.