Solstice (FREE)
BACCHANALIA!
I haven’t read the book ‘Bittersweet’, have you? I found ‘Quiet’ genuinely life-changing.
But by the time Susan Cain wrote ‘Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole’ in 2022 I was already sick of the word - and the concept.
After all, bittersweetness is the orphan’s lot.
When you are young and your parent(s) die, everything happy is also sad. The good things - the transformative and the quotidian - are bittersweet.
Yes, my late-teens and twenties were full of bittersweetness and I am Over It.
Today is the summer solstice. The tipping point of the year. And I know I am not alone in feeling that this moment in the calendar always arrives with a blast of sun, and a tinge of grief.
A bittersweet tipping point.
I am lucky that I don’t fear or dread winter. Oh, remind me of this in January and February and I will change my tune, but of course January and February inevitably and intrinsically cause despair.1 But while we tip towards darkness today, it is a gradual change - slowly, slowly a blanket is drawn over this tiny island - and with it we tip towards things I love (autumn colours, lamp light, jumpers).
The seasons I love the most are the transitions - spring and autumn. I have said before that September feels like falling in love to me. So does March. There is an electricity I feel in the transition times. But the summer solstice is different. As the Garden Witch so beautifully writes:
“There is a magic around midsummer, but with all old festival times, magic comes hand-in-hand with chaos. A sense of an unravelling, untamed wildness that occurs at this time of the year… There is an imbalance because nature, always a chaotic force, is at its strongest and is unsteadied by man.”
The gardeners feel it - the hastening growth, the surge of energy brought on by the long, hot days, everything outside suddenly, almost imperceptibly, getting out of hand. The blasting sun, so sapping of my energy and appetite, is drawn into the roots of everything growing around us and they begin to summon themselves up to their greatest heights.
Wait, I have just paused in my writing to go back and read what I wrote last year on the solstice - bizarrely I wrote about Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet’ and about my parents and about parties. I was about to come on to parties. I need some new ideas. Or are these the thoughts that will always come at summer’s peak?
Listening to Chips Channon’s diaries has been fascinating, hilarious, and confronting. Why did we ever stop having parties? And I don’t mean a couple of polite drinks parties each year, I mean a party every week! Channon attends several social engagements every day. A lunch, two cocktail receptions, a dinner and a ball. Every day. It is staggering.
And it is impossible not to listen to these tales of perpetual bacchanalia, and the constant romances and indiscretions that ensue, and the inevitable post-party gossip, and not think of the ten million think-pieces written on how sad and socially isolated we are in the year 2026 and how no one is having any sex or fun.
Well, perhaps it is the solstice with its potent mix of surging energy and its threat of the tumble towards winter, or my return in triumph to London, or Chips Channon’s sordid social tales, but I am determined: I am going to have parties. Lots of parties. Perhaps I will simply pick a night - say Friday - and have an open house every week. I will channel Chips and will order case after case of champagne, and I will try and stir up some trouble - and some fun - and will hope to find hungover revellers dozing under the furniture in the morning.2
It will be a modern ‘salon’ where no one is allowed to talk about their job, their children’s schooling, their own mortgage or mortgage rates generally, the housing market, the economy nor any matter of public policy, their holiday plans (unless interesting), nor what they watch on TV. For what is more fun than a party with rules?
As per Chips’ parties, elaborate jewels will be a requirement (after all, lab-grown diamonds are as cheap as Chips now) and I may impose a black tie dress code (seeing all the Ascot revellers is making me deeply nostalgic for Getting Dressed, and makes more vivid my seething resentment re living in the époque of the ‘high end tracksuit’).
Only the most interesting, attractive, and brilliant people of all ages will be invited (for Chips it was mostly royals but I think I had better set my sights a little lower) and anyone I don’t like I will ‘cut’ (which in Chipsism I think was looking at the person, turning and walking away. In my case it may be ‘with a knife’ but let’s see).
I blame social media for almost everything that is wrong with modern society (honestly, just delete it? Like, it’s not difficult. And it will improve your life immeasurably and in every way) but I can at least be the change I want to see in the world, e.g. more excellent parties, more raucousness, less standing around talking about people’s mortgages, caring less about seeming interesting on social media, caring more about being actually interesting.
In short: BACCHANALIA!
Everything is teetering on the edge of solstice chaos and helter-skelter. And I like it.
Surely not a coincidence that it is the time of year that involves the least gardening and time outdoors
All of these people had children of course, but had a staff, or had sensibly sent them off to boarding school so as to enjoy their social (and sex) lives
I'm on the opposite end of this debate. After reading umpteen New York Times articles about how important it is to be *social* and *get out there* and *have friends*, especially as you age (I'm 65), I really worked on that. I take lots of classes and go to synagogue on the regular and have made many friends in those environments. However, whenever I made an arrangement to do something social with one or more of those people (e.g. attend a party), I would spend 24 hours before the event dreading it, then 3 hours doing the event and enjoying myself, then 24 hours after the event recovering. I have decided to embrace my deep introvert self and not socialize like that anymore, except in a structured way, as in a class or at services. Anything else saps my soul.
More parties please! 😁💃🏻