Summer, even tho’ a Cali girl, wasn’t particularly a fan of the Beach
Boys. Part of it is a generational thing, of course, but she did love
plenty of 60’s music (an early gift when we had just met and were in
rehearsals for “Tir na nOg”, was her handing off the entire DVD set of
The Beatles Anthology to me in a Safeway bag because I’d made some
obscure Harrison reference) and there are pictures of her as a teenager
in the 90’s totally kitted out in hippie gear with her girlfriends.
Summer’s tastes (and mine) ran to DCFC and Bon Iver and The National and
Low and Goldfrapp and Radiohead and Fever Ray and Beach House - the
people who influenced our own music. No, what cemented the Beach Boys
for me in thinking of Summer was firstly, her doing the first major
production outside B’way & London of Stoppard’s play “Rock n Roll”.
It was a long gig and hugely successful, a co-production between SF’s
ACT and Boston’s Huntington, she was brilliant and grateful and I saw it
a dozen times and they used some Brian Wilson in the show. Further, I
was always trekking back n forth to see her on Virgin America and they
had those great early tracks on their mp3 player (why doesn’t any other
airline do this? It’s brilliant). Finally, a confirmed, dyed in the wool
New Yorker, I had my chest blown open by the unadulterated, ten billion
kilowatt LOVE that emanated from Summer’s very being. She put a
thousand thousand G’s of California in my soul. I need her. I am broken.
But that is an unimpeachable fact. And that is why even if it hurts
like murder, it seems the right thing to do - listening to this when it
came upon me tonight and over and over and weeping (“we could be
married/and then we’d be happy” ) - because I know little sweetheart,
that you are with me, however ethereal, and that I will be with you
again forever and soon. To paraphrase a spoken word friend of mine
“never be ashamed to cry for that girl”. Love you forever, little
sweetie, little best friend… xo-m
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0spkrwl9Qk
