Santiago Salazar, "Pachuco Dub"

If New York is a city built on Pretend then the biggest lie we tell ourselves is that summer ends the second we get back from Labor Day. While summer technically lasts another two weeks, and you will still be sweltering well into October—no one remembers this now because it seems like it happened in another lifetime, but for the last few years the days leading up to Christmas were routinely in the low ’60s—we’re all complicit in the lie that it’s already autumn and we need to focus on our very important jobs so we can make money to see the groundbreaking cultural performances and eat at the exciting new restaurants and buy the dazzling “new” phones and generally throw ourselves into all of the other activities we embrace to help us forget our lives are largely meaningless. Anyway, good morning. Presumably you are now addressing your end-of-summer inbox and feverishly attempting to fool yourself into believing that it’s fall, the best season that we have here in New York. As skeptical as I am of almost all human endeavors, on this occasion I cannot bring myself to mock your deluded desire to invest what you do with significance. Once winter descends all hope you have will be extinguished for many months at a minimum and even if you make it through, the other side you come out on will see you scarred, sadder and less likely than ever to find the strength to convince yourself that any of it was worth the anguish. So go ahead, pretend that things are important. It won’t make a difference but there is only a little while left to you to imagine that it will. Anyway, here’s music. Enjoy. [Via]