After half a year of heavy jackets and coats, the whole idea of being able to walk out of your house in a linen shirt is a little weird. It’s wonderful, but at the same time, every time I get into the lift, I get this crazy feeling that I’ve forgotten something. I also feel absurdly under-dressed.
But summer is wonderful. SZ (a classmate) commented that I looked happy these days. I didn’t realize my face gave away that much. But yes, the sheer joy of squinting one’s eyes against the sun makes me happy. Summer tends to make me pensive and happy all at the same time. On that note, this is a photograph of a woman that I saw along the Southbank. Summer brings out all these stripey, dotty clothes. Like I said, to see all these people, devoid of their winter clothes almost gives you the impression that the city is walking half-naked. It’ll take sometime to get used to it, and by then the bloody weather may get cold again.
The heat in the afternoons in London isn’t enough to lull it into silence. Quite unlike the summer afternoons that I am more familiar with, when all is quiet, all is heavy and all is hot. No, the afternoons here are quite lively. But if you’re like me, sitting and studying for exams, you don’t notice the liveliness. Which in its own wonderful way, (sometimes) takes care of homesickness. And for some reason that brings to mind the wonderful Janis Joplin singing Summertime. I have no idea how, but the first twenty seconds of the song drown me in everything summer. I discovered this song, aptly and obviously enough in some teen summer.
Summertime is a fantastic song with a curious history of arrangements and genres. Originally composed by George Gershwin in 1935 for an opera, it found its way into even more jazzy circuits. The original by Gershwin sounds somewhat like this. And this fabulous 1968 video of Ella Fitzgerald singing the same number is absolutely wonderful.
The mind is rather drawn to Joplin today. I’ll just give in.
Posted on May 9th, 2008 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: London, Music, Film and Art, Photographs, Self | 4 Comments »







