You Musicians, On the Porch Summer Music

I am thankful to:

Muddy Waters, he taught me how to be sad
Jonathan Richman, he showed me how to be glad
The Clash, they told me to be mad

Luckily, the lessons did not happen in that order, exactly. But they commingled to make an entire sound, containing all.

This I think on the porch, on July 19, 2005. There is a heat advisory in effect, heat index above 100 for the next 24 hours. There are great rhythmic armies of insects, cicadas and other bugs in this mid-Atlantic area, in the poplars and oaks about me. They make an interesting sound, because there are three species or so, like horn sections or wind instruments conspiring to create an orchestra, and they begin their music at different points and trail away at others, the interplay, the counterpoint, and it is always majestic to me.

I can only imagine this is how contrapuntal aural concepts came to the first truly musical hominids, for the enhancement of song. But that is just a guess.


I grew up in Los Angeles, where the people live without the magic of: Humid summer nights when it is 85 degrees at 10 PM, and six months later, everything is silent and frozen. Now, in mid-summer on the east coast the lightning bugs come out in the gloaming. I feel cheated not to have had the chance to chase them down with a jar when I was young.


Every 17 years the cicadas come. They came in 1987, and they came again last year. They make a fine whirring music during the day, then after a few weeks of life drop to the ground and burrow and slumber for 17 years and emerge again. The old faithful Lazarus of the entomological world.

I love all of this, the music, the bugs, the trees, the weather, and it is all mostly free. Such a gift, and I wonder who to give thanks to.