Scatterbrain: a letter from the End of Summer
Seasons; the musical taste police; in praise of Spanish dialogue marks — an end to the tediousness of "he said / she said / they said"?
Raging against the dying of the light
It’s all over. Or almost over.
Summer is coming to a close in the northern hemisphere, the days are getting shorter, birds are migrating south, and we switch from white to red wine. Salads give way to lentil stews, windbreakers are replaced by bomber jackets, and our morning constitutionals turn into a test of the will: will we leave the bed to go for a walk in the dark, or will we steal an extra hour of sleep? I’m not one to suffer the cold but I must say that the darkness that’s already showing its ugly face, does get to me.
Let me tell you, folks, this light thing — it's incredible, absolutely incredible. Tremendous power, this light thing, folks…1 It influences everything: from our moods, to the amount of alcohol we drink, to the profit the national porn industry makes.2 I don’t fancy the coming days of weak, dying light — the anaemic sun that never reaches the zenith — the jaundiced grey of it all. I guess one of those lamps some people use to compensate for the lack of sunlight might help, but our electricity bills are about to go up, just when we’ll need electricity the most — quelle surprise. The one remaining thing to look forward to until April 2025 is that peaceful period from the 23rd until the 28th or 29th of December,3 when the city is rather empty and you can visit art exhibitions, walk into a restaurant without a booking, or hang out in central London without getting crushed to death by a crowd. At least that’s still to come.
I’m aware that the Dylan Thomas reference I’m deploying in this scatterbrain letter is rather out of place. After all, he writes about old age and death and the need to resist going without a fight, while I’m writing about the end of summer. But this poem has always reminded me of these weeks when you can sense that a battle to the death is taking place between the seasons. Maybe it’s unfair to associate winter with death, since this time of the year still signals the Eternal Return of that unstoppable force called life. Maybe. Either way, this morning I recited some Dylan Thomas-inspired lines to my tomatoes. Why would someone recite poetry to a tomato plant, you might ask. Well, because I’ve been growing them from the seed since early May and they’re still green; and I wonder if they’ll ripen before the summer is over, or if they’ll die in the cold without reaching their best.
Do not grow gentle in the fading light,
Tomatoes,4
Late summer should blush and ripen on the vine,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The tomatoes, needless to say, didn’t reply.