SRS’26 | Summer: Breeze.

Hyperthemesia sounds exhausting. It’s exhausting to say, quite honestly.It is the rare ability to accurately remember nearly every day of one’s life in absolute detail - what you wore, ate, saw, said, and did. Every day.Of course there are days that I remember…well, pieces of days. Mostly glimpses: brief sequences - photographs, edits. My memories are clearer and more distinct when associated with an object - a favorite shirt or beloved comic book - but at their strongest when paired with either an odor or sound. I cannot tell you what I was doing 40 years ago today, and there’s probably a photo in our library of what I was doing 25 years ago, but still I do not remember it.But I can tell you, with confidence, exactly what I was doing 54 years ago during the summer of 1972.I was listening to music.The top hits of 1971 lacked... empathy, somehow. And 1973 was too showy - too variety-show-ready.It was 1972 where I absorbed everything that I love about music. Check out a playlist of hits from that year: they are awash with cacophony: rich strings with rhythmic horns with toy pianos with overdubbed harmonies and the occasional cheeky Hammond organ. There is so much MUSIC in this music.And the variety. Lean On Me by Bill Withers, American Pie by Don McLean, Heart Of Gold by Neil Young, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack, The Candy Man by Sammy Davis, Jr, Take It Easy by the Eagles, Song Sung Blue by Neil Diamond, Papa Was A Rolling Stone by the Temptations…For me, these songs are visceral. They are hypnotic, time machines, siren song. And I discovered them all through the combination of Kansas City’s stalwart Soul and Adult Contemporary radio stations and a bright orange Radio Shack™ FlavorRadio™. It was amazing - you could hear music in the yard when you were trimming the sides of the grass, or in your room when you were (supposed to be) cleaning it or AT NIGHT when the world was (supposed to be) asleep. And for FREE. Miracle box. Thus listening to music is what I was doing that summer.The story my Mom tells is that as a tiny baby I was much so much soothed by music that she put a radio in my crib with me (at a safe distance).As a single parent, she couldn’t always “sleep when the baby sleeps”, and no one had yet invented the “let the baby piteously cry itself to sleep” strategy, so the radio solved two problems by allowing her to get me to sleep quickly and then use the time to do the dishes and boil the bottles and get a little sleep of her own. However, it did have one down side.R&B, rock and roll, and classical music all made me MORE awake and volatile, resulting in either fretting or dancing about (in a prone little baby position). The key to relaxation was country music.“Oh, come on little baby, now listen to this…” she would say, tuning to Bach or Smokey Robinson - to no avail: I was calmed only by the twang of a steel guitar. Even if she tried to change it after I’d fallen asleep, I would immediately stir with concern.So a few years later, when she discovered a super-affordable plastic radio WITH AN EARPHONE JACK, it seemed that God had heard her those many nights she lay in bed, unintentionally learning every word of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, and had offered her a transistor-powered solace.So I listened to every radio station. I kind of knew there was a Black one and then other ones, but I listened anyway.My favorite songs of 1972 were “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green, “A Horse With No Name” by America (my favorite horse song until “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey (sp) in 1975)……and number one - “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts (not to be confused with Sid and Marty Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf fame).I liked this one so much that my mom actually bought me the single. I remember listening to it over and over, watching it spin around and around on the record player, trying to work out the lyrics.Even at that young of an age, I knew that most of these songs were about love, which seemed nice, but was a bit confused when lyrics became poetic and metaphorical. (I actually appreciate that now: the 1972 lyric “makin’ love” would be replaced in today’s music with unmistakably graphic step-by-step instruction.)What confused me most about “Summer Breeze” was its referrals to jasmine, mentioned in the song seven times. I had already been confused by Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” references to “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme”, which the nuns played on the guitar sometimes during chapel at school. I didn’t understand the “Herb / Love” angle, though it did make Thanksgiving more exciting, since that’s the only time I saw all of those at once.But jasmine notwithstanding, I clearly remember standing at the edge of our console record player, staring at the revolving turntable, singing along with both the lyrics and the strangely satisfying notes of the twangy guitar solo. And I did feel fine.Songs of 1972 Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe