It’s hot. Very hot. Too hot to be walking the thirty or so blocks to SONY BMG where I have a meeting, and then the twenty or so blocks back and on another avenue where I am to meet a friend. It is the ultimate New York City summer day and I feel like I am about to pass out either from a general headiness from the many good things at present (professional, personal), the fact that I am fully in love and landed on that square without even trying or wanting, that I am giddy already and with reason, or perhaps it is just the oh-so-humid day, the sun beating down (beating down), and that no matter how I may try I am unable to stay hydrated enough. There simply is not enough San Pellegrino in the world, and maybe tap water is fine, but frankly, I need some salt and Pellegrino is slightly salty and replaces all that I am losing.

That I looked good this morning in my sheer black dress with my ivory slip: that it is the coolest (and coolest) thing I own, that I wore my silver tap-shoes that I bought in Paris and that are flat and comfortable, that my hair was combed into a neat bun and that my eyes were shiny and bright (granted with the extra help of a little mascara) means little in this heat. I am now sweating, my feet are blistered and swollen, I have a sunburn across my shoulders and the nape of my neck where it is damp from the heat, and my once neat bun is falling down in long, wheat-colored strands about my face. In short, I look either like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards, or, that I have just had an afternoon session of afternoon delight. I would wager, however, that it is the former that I most resemble, not the latter.

As I walked down Madison on that day, all of this got me thinking. The first thing that thought, or the first tune that occurred was “Hot Child in the City” by Nick Gilder (yes, I was running wild, but was I looking pretty? hunch. That remains the question and I am unable to answer it). This then got me thinking about all of the other summer songs that I could think of in the moment; the sad and searching “Summer in the City” by Regina Spektor, “In the Summertime” by one-hit wonder Mungo Jerry; “In Summer” by Cao Fang (most recently used for a G.E. commercial), “New Cobweb Summer” by Lambchop, the gritty “Summer in the City” (the Butthole Surfers version); “Summer Highland Falls by Billy Joel; “Summer Nights” from the film Grease; “Summersong” by the Decemberists; and of course, my all-time favorite of this summer moment (because this varies, although I’ll note that it applied last summer as well) “Long Hot Summer” by Paul Weller (the acoustic version), which seems somehow more fitting because it is languid and slightly soporific as hot summer days can be and also, because it is befitting of my mood these days. Just consider the lyrics and you will have my state of mind, which is bittersweet and introspective.

Of course, there are many more songs with the word “summer” in them and I could probably come up with an even longer list, but in twenty or so blocks, these are the ones that occurred. Then there were the other songs that are not summer specific but that remind me of summer for reasons I cannot quite comprehend but that likely go back to my youth or perhaps some summer romance/love-affair because they all seem to be about love and all, or most, have a similar zeitgeist. Such are songs like, “Love to Love You, Baby” (the extended, orgasmic mix, of course, for none other will do) by Donna Summer as well as “On The Radio” by Donna Summer; “ABC” by the Jackson Five (and no, I’m not ashamed to say I like it!); “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer; “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie Hawkins (the perfect song to listen to while riding the Number One train up or downtown because it has that train sound embedded within the song itself; “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice (if he can’t take his eyes off of the ‘you’ in the song, so it is that I can’t stop listening to him. It has become my New York City song of the moment); “Sweetest Hangover” by Diana Ross; “Couldn’t We Still Be Friends” by Todd Rundgren, and I could go on and on and even have these and many other songs in my iPod under the folder named “Grand Central Mix” because it is everything I want to hear while moving through, or, standing still, in Grand Central Station. Note, I stop at The Whispering Wall every time I pass through, remembering that a friend of mine says or swore he does the same, yet I have never seen him there. Fool that I am, I continue to seek. Even turning my ear to the wall, hoping it still holds some echo of what was, yet I am constantly met with disappointment and silence. A fool such as I.

I move through Manhattan with my iPod and thus, with a soundtrack which puts a beat in my step. I come to associate certain songs with certain places, certain dates, times, faces. With people. Everything then has some resonance, and in each note I find something I was looking for and come winter, I shall find summer buried deep within these notes, these lyrics and it will be the sweet and the sour.

It is already late July when it seems to me just yesterday was the Solstice, but then, as a good friend pointed out (and I thought this a glass half-empty statement) it is not just the beginning of summer, but in some ways, it marks the end because it is the day after which the days grow shorter – incrementally shorter, yes, but solstice is the longest day – after that, it’s a slow and steady decline as we fall without wanting into autumn and then the darkness and chill of winter.

For now, I want to suck summer up through my straw. I want to eat from Mr. Softee on the corner of Fifth Avenue. I want Carvel with a cherry or two on top. I want to see a deer again in Woodlawn, because once I did and I knew that this meant something. I knew that it meant something Good, in the true Platonic sense of the word. That whatever happened after that, was right and could never be wrong. I want to rewind. I want to live in the moment but I want some things back because they are mine and were taken from me and by force. No, I don’t expect it to be all about me. Hardly. Few things are truly about me, if any. Even this writing is really about something other. I want time to stop still and I want to rest in it’s palm and forever in the summer while the city bustles and buzzes down below and someone named Angel rings a bell over Fifth Avenue. I want to seek the cool confines of the church. I want Love with a capital L and I do not want to settle for anything less. I reject mediocrity in all of its incarnations. I reject martyrs and bible-thumpers. I reject names spat in anger. I reject all of this and more but what I accept – so simple. A hand held as I tiptoe down the steps, a pure and simple kiss by a silver-grey river, the scent of privet and of the musk tree in full-bloom. I am open to so much. I wonder if anyone sees it? Or perhaps I am just another hot child in the city.

Thanks for listening,

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

New York, New York | July 

Afternote: I found this article on the American Mental Health Foundation's website, on today, Midsummer, and found this most compelling. Do take the time to look... I promise, it's worth it, and it's brief.