By The Landlord
The cool underside of a turned over pillow.
Sitting in breeze by a riverside willow.
Fresh-frozen peas, crispy in pack
Crunchily melting on neck, then down back.
Skipping through fountains, rainbowy mists
Hydrants on streets, cold run on wrists,
Iced tea, gin, cucumber, freshly fridge made,
Slices of watermelon served in the shade.
Internal, external, mental or visceral,
Lyrically pouring out metaphor, literal,
Wherever you find it, green grass to pavement
Songs that describe some cooling refreshment ...
The evidence is all around us. No one can claim we haven't been warned. The world is hotting up, and so are people – hot under the collar, hot-headedly boiling with reactionary rage in ways that lead to many stupid decisions. The planet is ablaze with wildfires, from California to Australia, the Amazon to Siberia.
The Tokyo Olympics, just beginning this week, are set to be the hottest ever, with temperatures likely to be 33C (91.4F) and above. Next year's World Cup, absurdly and corruptly placed in Qatar, in stadiums built under conditions of slavery in temperatures of 50C which will then be 'cooled' by vast power-guzzling systems, powered on fossil fuels.
Across America and elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of shoppers park their cars outside malls, leaving the engines on so their air conditioning will keep their cars cool. All of which means Planet Earth just heating up even more, leading to cycles tropical storms and flash floods in an ever increasing, repeating spiral ...
So ... Stop! Time to cool it …
Street life
This week then, wherever you are in the world it feels apt to calm things down a little, and in our own way, with songs that describe, in passing or as a main subject, anything that cools us off and offers a temperature lowering, calming balm.
The subjects of summer and heat have come up in the past, but this week we focus on cooling and refreshment, which could mean anything from eating ice-cream or iced drinks to swimming in lakes, seeking shade, any temperature lowering of physical or even mental states.
This week then we've set out the Song Bar big big canopy in the beer garden and many distinguished guests, variously drinking iced refreshments and more, have things to say on the subject.
Park life
"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment," opines Jane Austen, as I bring her requested cup of tea, in what is turning out to be a most refined setting.
Louisa May Alcott agrees, describing our scene, as it happens, down to a T. “It was fortunate that tea was at hand, to produce a lull and provide refreshment – for they would have been hoarse and faint if they had gone on much longer.”
Tea on a hot day seems an odd solution, but my mum always used to swear by it (though not by saying ‘bring me my ‘effing tea’) declaring that it would first heat you up and then cool you down. Is that true?
“Tea is also a sort of spiritual refreshment, an elixir of clarity and wakeful tranquility. Respectfully preparing tea and partaking of it mindfully create heart-to-heart conviviality, a way to go beyond this world and enter a realm apart. No pleasure is simpler, no luxury cheaper, no consciousness-altering agent more benign,” says James Norwood Pratt.
There is certainly something in this, as shown by any Japanese tea garden, the ceremonial sense of preparation and cleansing with which this is associated. But how about some watermelon?
Zoo life. Ring-tailed lemurs also have refined tastes …
Also joining the literary party, Oscar Wilde recalls own of his own famous lines on the subject: “I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o’clock.” We may be a little early (or late) depending on where are in the world, but it is always time for refreshment here at the Bar. A swim up bar is also an ideal setting, but also one, like this public pool in Budapest, where chess is encouraged to refresh the mind.
Chess in Budapest
Liquid poured on the inside or outside of the body is certainly a key cooling method, not to mention immersion in water itself. Yet even the sight of the stuff can have form of refreshment.
“For fountains, they are a Great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs,” says the Renaissance all-rounder poet Francis Bacon, being a little over particular.
Fountains of plenty
And here’s another Song Bar guest, the poet Edgar Guest, taking us on another cooling stream of consciousness:
There's nothing that builds up a toil-weary soul
Like a day on a stream,
Back on the banks of the old fishing hole
Where a fellow can dream.
There's nothing so good for a man as to flee
From the city and lie
Full length in the shade of a whispering tree
And gaze at the sky.
But others here might see refreshment beyond the realms of liquid. temperature lowering. Done with drinks, and nodding off in the corner, Ovid is around too, and reckons: “There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.”
Mark Twain thinks refreshment is best served in the form of laughter: “Comedy keeps the heart sweet; but we all know that there is wholesome refreshment for both mind and heart in an occasional climb among the pomps of the intellectual snow-summits built by Shakespeare and those others.”
The playwright Brendan Behan has decided that a change of location offers a different form of refreshment, with this eccentric observation:
“New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.”
And finally, what of music itself? Johann Sebastian Bach is honouring us with his presence, and says: The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”
So where does all of this lead us? Last week, in the introduction, I mentioned a clip from Spike Lee’s brilliant 1989 film Do The Right Thing, in which during a hot Brooklyn summer, local tension and rage boils over in the final climactic scenes. It’s still relevant this week.
But over 50 years ago tension in America was far higher. After the 1968 assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and as the Vietnam War raged on, the summer of 1969 was boiling up for more violence around the country. In Harlem, community leaders decided to bring some respite in the form of the Harlem Cultural Festival to Mount Morris Park, featuring a stellar lineup. It happened on the same day as the moon landings. It was also also a completely overlooked and forgotten event, overshadowed by Woodstock. Although filmed, footage was never shown. Until now. While it was a very hot day (also with some rain), the refreshment and joy of this event is palpable. Last night I saw the documentary film, directed by Questlove, and I can’t recommend it enough. I simply didn’t want it to end. It is filled with hair-on-back-of-the-neck moments from start to finish …
And to finish, here’s an eccentric starter song, by Can co-founder Holger Czukay - Cool In The Pool (previously nominated for the theme of summer by another great and sadly missed eccentric 9hairs9knots):
And so then, which guest guru will help bring even more cool refreshment to this theme. There still can’t be be anyone more appropriate than the fresh breeze of effervescent joy than our wonderful Japanese correspondent - Hoshino Sakura! Place your song suggestions in the virtual ice bucket below by 11pm on Monday UK summer time, for playlists published next week. Keep cool. Hopefully it will be a breeze …
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