The Beach

Watercolor (“Bad Dream”) by Hallie Cohen

The famed Italian writer Cesare Pavese was the author of a novel called The Beach, which contains the following lovely line, “We were at the age when a friend’s conversation seems like oneself talking.” Pavese later would commit suicide, but then there were The Beach Boys who wrote the classic Don’t Worry Baby, with its famous words, “Well it’s been building up inside of me/ For oh I don’t know how long…” And sandwiched between them in the 50’s The Wind by the Jesters, with it’s “when the cool summer breeze sends a chill down my spine…” Sargent was inspired by Venice. Music, literature and art have all owe something to the sea. There’s an old expression “children should be seen, but not heard,” which is less used in an age where we seek to empower children, but can’t we say the reverse for the sea? Should it not be heard rather than seen? It’s nice to pick up a shell and hear the ocean whispering its secrets but the actual sea is dangerous. It’s like they Scylla and Charybdis of recreation luring the intrepid adventurer to his or her death. Rip tides pull us out to sea and the sea magnetically draws depressives. Sylvia Plath might have ended it by sticking her head into an oven, but Virginia Woolf walked right into the sea and never came back. Beaches are filled with half clothed women who turn heads and  create neck injuries in glowering men. The famed l960’s CBS documentary Harvest of Shame, could easily spawn a sequel entitled Harvest of Melanoma, showing the effect of sun and sand on the human skin.