Feels Like Summer — Childish Gambino

#365Songs: July 26th

Oh, I hope we change
I really thought this world could change
But it seems like the same
I know
Oh, my mind is still the same
I’m hoping that this world will change
But it just seems the same
I know
Oh, I hope we change

Planet Sets Record for Hottest Day Twice in a Row — New York Times, 7.24

That was the headline on Monday, the day more wildfires sparked and spread at record pace across the West, the same week politicians and venture capitalists, lobbyists and business leaders threw their support and money at Donald Trump. Not because they like him, as a person, but rather because they know he’ll exit the Paris Agreement (again), defund the EPA (again), and roll back regulations on fossil fuel (again) while destabilizing electric transportation progress (wtf, Musk).

That’s the problem with wealth accumulation. The ‘more for me, less for you’ mentality, the ‘I won’t be around when it all falls apart so laissez faire my ass.’ And we, as consumers, fall right into the trap: more more more faster faster faster. That’s our thing, right? Accumulation of things on a whim at the cost of the one thing we should care most about.

To quote Lenny Bruce, “We’re all gonna die.”

You can feel it in the streets
On a day like this, the heat
I feel like summer
She feel like summer
This feel like summer
I feel like summer

But wait… I promised a ray of light, a sliver of optimism, a hopeful air in a hopeless time. Hope always shines brightest in the youngest generation, and this era of kids has something the others didn’t have: personal, anecdotal experience with their own existential demise. They’ve breathed this toxic air, worn masks instead of smiles as a result of a climate-strengthened pandemic, fled tornadoes and floods and hurricanes and tsunamis and dust storms and stretches of temperatures so high and so sustained that summer isn’t summer anymore.

Seven billion souls that move around the sun
Rolling faster, fast and not a chance to slow down
Slow down
Men who made machines that want what they decide
Parents tryna tell their children please slow down
Slow down
I know
Oh, I know you know that pain
I’m hopin’ that this world will change

These kids, they get it. Not that they’re the first generation to rally together, gather in the streets, fight against the man — and it is always a goddamn man — but they’ve seen more, felt more, sacrificed their childhoods as a result of their parents’ and grandparents’ manic greed and inability to demand change.

Perhaps the light in the crack here is that change is our only way forward, one final stand before it’s too late. The kids are wise enough to know dusty, old ass politicians can’t save them, know their parents aren’t trying to save them, and fully expect they’ll have fewer opportunities with more debt while battling the highest levels of mental health challenges of any previous generation. They’ve already lost too much to trust anyone other than themselves. The moment Joe dropped and Kamala stepped in, they rose from their ashes.

Every day gets hotter than the one before
Running out of water, it’s about to go down
Go down
Air that kill the bees that we depend upon
Birds were made for singing
Waking up to no sound
No sound
I know
Oh, I know you know my pain

I first saw Donald Glover in NBC’s brilliantly under-appreciated sitcom, Community, a show that masterfully satirized all of pop culture and the educational system that feeds us perpetuated ignorance. His music moniker, Childish Gambino, didn’t land on my radar until several years later, around the time his opus FX show, Atlanta, was released.

Never shy about issues that concern him — such as systematic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement tackled in his 2018 hit This is America — he always finds a way to bring a tonal, light airiness. As I think about those hottest days in recorded history, what it means and how we react, I found myself drawn back to the second protest song he released that year, Feels Like Summer. It’s a breezy R&B rhythm superimposed over a dire lyrical landscape, that feeling of disappointment tinted with the final sigh of desperate optimism that I embody so deeply right now. To feel any hope at all is light enough at this point, and perhaps there’s a virality here, if enough of us cough out even the smallest particle of optimism — meshed in micro clouds of wildfire smoke and diesel fumes — there’s still hope for change. Maybe. Maybe?

I’m hopin’ that this world will change (yeah)
But it just seems the same
I know
Oh, I hope we change
I really thought this world could change
But it seems like the same
I know
Oh, my mind is still the same
I’m hoping that this world will change
But it just seems the same
I know
Oh, I hope we change

~

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