Beach Music

Along the coast of South Carolina, one can see, well, the coast of South Carolina: wide expanses of unfussy beach, sky, and deep mazes of creek, dotted here and there with people and houses. From a painter’s perspective, there are good contrasts between nature and man, sky and land, light and shadow, a soft natural palette and bits of bright kites and boiled seafood. It’s a quiet place, where one is forced to do a lot of looking and noticing when one isn’t napping. “A quiet place” reminds me of the song (1964) of the same name by Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, a standard in the canon of Carolina beach music and my parents’ tape deck on road trips south from Philadelphia and Washington, D. C.

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