Ink Tea Stone Leaf

It’s winter here in the Pacific Northwest, and yesterday’s temperature peaked at 60 degrees Fahrenheit because the concept of “winter” is being drastically redefined in the Twenty First Century by climate change. All this unseasonable warmth has stirred something in me, and on an impulse I began working on a new musical project: assembling the ultimate summer playlist out of the mp3s on my hard drive.

In the mold of my ultimate and definitive Christmas playlist of 2024, the playlist will eventually be pared down to 100 tracks and arranged to flow in such fashion as to perfectly accompany an afternoon spent lounging on the deck in a hammock, with a book in my hands and a tall glass of iced tea on an improvised table to my right. Evoking both the days and nights of the season, it will rock, it will be chill, and it will feel like a gentle warmth on your skin in the shade.

However, there are some obstacles to successfully realizing the full potential of this playlist. I would like to enumerate some of them now:

1. While visually scanning my collection, it is much more difficult to identify songs about summer (or that impart the very specific summer vibe I am seeking) at a glance than it is to identify songs about Christmas.
2. Thanks to Ariele and her library card, my collection of mp3s has ballooned in the last few years with albums and songs that I simply have not gotten around to listening to, which means that many summer songs are being excluded for no better reason than I am ignorant of them.
3. Although my preliminary list of songs to consider already has nearly three hundred items (which as I said must eventually be winnowed down to an even one hundred), there are songs that I could not possibly justify leaving off but which have not yet become a part of my vast collection of mp3s.
4. It is taking every ounce of willpower I have not to simply flood this playlist with the music of the Beach Boys, for whom I have already constructed a most excellent 50 song playlist.

In light of all these challenges, it will take me a bit of time to assemble the version of this playlist that will stand the test of time. Even so, I wanted to let you all know that it was in the works, in case you feel that you need something to look forward to as the seasons turn. I will have something for you that I think will put a smile on your face, and will probably almost definitely be less than 10% Beach Boys songs.