Every week, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 35-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
The character in “Straying To Summer” feels like the same one in “Rigid Man In An Ice Age,” a song written some years later. Neither of them are based on anyone I know, per se. They’re fictional stand-ins, manifestations of a male mindset that hinders social progress. Quintessential assholes, if you will. Self-absorbed know-it-alls stuck in their regressive ways. Immobilized. Summer here is freedom, which is not just another word for nothing left to lose.
Tunnel to the sun from the hermit’s house
Cross brown winter fields
Black-red block of thought
Never yearning
Never straying
Never yearning
Never straying to summer
Never wanting wanting to begin
He’s standing here in the past
Never
Never straying to summer
“Straying To Summer” from Flood Plain (K, 1993) (download):
