A self-confidential dispatch from the last month of the good life
Editor’s Note: Defiant Joy
A toast to the heat, the hedonism, and the refusal to let the good part end
This is my longest piece yet. That’s on purpose. Caveat: It's less "on the nose" business and more vibe. Its full of fun links and secret paths.
It’s meant to be read slowly, not skimmed. Preferably outside. Print it out or open it on your iPad. Take it to the beach, the boat, the backyard lounger. Read it while holding a gin and tonic or a cold glass of wine in those long dog days of summer.
There’s a moment in August, usually sometime in the late afternoon, usually in this very week, when you feel it slip. The sun’s still hot. The drinks still cold. But something shifts. The shadows stretch. The inbox gets louder. Someone mentions fall.
This is your cue.
Not to panic. Not to pack.
But to dig in.
August isn’t the end of summer. It’s the part where you decide whether you’ll live it or just narrate it.
Lately I’ve been thinking about The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Not the poem itself, but the energy.
A man so burdened by self-consciousness he talks himself out of joy.
There’s a line I can’t shake:
“Do I dare to eat a peach?”
Innocent on the surface. Heartbreaking in context.
The peach is pleasure. It’s mess. It’s presence. And he’s afraid of all of it.
That’s the risk we face every time we trade presence for performance. So this is my counterweight. A dispatch from the dog days. A refusal to fade into structure.
August is not over unless you let it be.
This isn’t nostalgia.
This is now.
This is strategy dressed as leisure.
Tracklist of a Late-Stage Summer
“The right song makes you feel rich even when you’re not.”
The final weeks of summer aren’t measured in days. They’re scored in songs.
Heat has a sound.
Memory has a tempo.
And real, feral, unapologetic joy has a playlist.
It’s not about what’s trending. It’s about what gets played with the windows down, the emails ignored, and the shadows growing longer.
Here’s mine:
It starts with Chris Stapleton’s “Bad As I Used To Be,” possibly the most honest anthem of the season. Not good, not better… just not as bad.
That’s August in a line. Sun-drenched and slightly out of excuses.
From there, it shapeshifts.
Drake’s Get It Together and NOKIA roll in like heatwave mirages.
Lainey Wilson’s Watermelon Moonshine tastes like barefoot evenings on decks no architect designed.
Burton Cummings’ Stand Tall reads like a letter to the version of you that survived June.
Talk Talk’s Life’s What You Make It holds it all together. Not motivational. Just true.
The rest pulses across genre and geography:
The Heavy. The Ronettes. Sting. The Smiths. Marvin. Mayer.
The Beach Boys. Coldplay you’d never admit to liking.
And then… the Drift:
🥃 Stuck On You – Lionel Richie
🚙 Pain and Misery – The Teskey Brothers
💨 Long White Line – Sturgill Simpson
🏁 Troubadour – George Strait
🌾 4x4xU – Lainey Wilson
🏖 Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys (Remastered, obviously)
🌊 God Only Knows – The Beach Boys (sometimes perfection deserves a double feature)
🎯 Water of Love – Dire Straits
💔 Still in Love With You – Thin Lizzy
🐍 Hysteria – Def Leppard
🔥 Got to Give It Up Pt. 1 – Marvin Gaye
🛟 Echoes – Pink Floyd (mostly because some sunsets ask big questions and only this song knows how to respond)
But here’s the thing:
It’s not just music. It’s imprint.
Psychologists call it affective tagging, when a song latches onto a moment and brands it forever - ohhh I love that shit!.
You’ll hear “Club Tropicana” in February and suddenly remember a pair of sunglasses, a girl named Marcella, or how the air smelled right before a storm.
Music does what capital can’t: it makes time feel like it belonged to you.
Which is why the best brands and developers are starting to build sound into space.
A pool without a playlist is just water.
A private club without a vibe is a WeWork in disguise.
Luxury is being redefined as mood control and music is the Trojan horse.
Cultural Signal
Vibe has become utility. Soundtracks are now as critical to luxury as finishings and furniture.
Behavioural Hook
Music encodes memory. A good playlist doesn’t just fill space, it makes it personal.
Strategic Implication
The next great lifestyle brand won’t start with a logo. It’ll start with a sound.
Listen to the full 2025 Endless Summer HERE.
What did I miss?
Stone Fruit, Salt, and Scarcity
A dispatch from the kitchen, the garden, and the final stretch of appetite
There’s a point in August when your appetite stops chasing novelty and starts chasing memory. You don’t want the new place. You want grilled peaches. Good mozzarella. Bad napkins. Arugula that bites back. Salt. Cream. Fruit that tastes like it’s running out of time.
That’s how I’ve been eating lately. Food that’s personal, not performative. Plates with rhythm, not rules.
Last winter, while the Pacific Northwest drowned in grey, I taught myself to make pasta with my girls. It wasn’t about health. It was about process. Connection. Flour on the counter. Dough under your palms. Missy Robbins’ book open like scripture.
Now it’s ricotta and mint. Melon with prosciutto. Cherry tomato confit on toast, slick with garlic. A soft-boiled egg over chickpeas and blood orange. And a grilled peach salad I keep making again and again—for the taste, and the defiance.
Soft Recipe: Grilled Peach, Mozzarella & Rocket Salad
No measuring. Just angles, sunlight, and appetite. Go ahead, Prufrock. Eat the damn peach.
- Halve a few ripe peaches. Grill flesh-side down.
- Tear buffalo mozzarella.
- Scatter rocket or arugula.
- Drizzle olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt. Maybe a slice of prosciutto.
- Eat barefoot, preferably outside. Drink: cold Pinot Grigio or Fruilano (see below).
- Don’t post it.
I’ve been stealing from Home Farm Cooking by Catherine & John Pawson.
Farm lunches. Slow plates. Summer simplicity. Food that doesn’t show off. It just shows up.
Cultural Signal
We’ve passed peak wellness, my thesis is it is too ubiquitous and done (like "luxury"). People aren’t chasing chlorophyll drops or spirulina anymore. They’re chasing texture. They want ritual without religion. Richness without performance.
Behavioural Hook
Late-summer eating isn’t optimization, it’s attachment. These meals make you feel like the world isn’t ending yet.
Strategic Implication
Forget “farm-to-table” copywriting. The next hospitality wave is rhythm-as-luxury. Brands that restore a sense of timing. Pre or post Ai, I dunno. I do know that things humans do will have value - see this POST. Products that taste like a specific moment. Real estate that feels seasonal again. Art that is rich and has the dept that GPT can't fathom - yet.
Cocktails That Clock the Season
A dispatch from the hot hours, the slow pours, and the long shadows before dinner
At this point in the summer, a drink isn’t just a drink. It’s how you stretch time.
Not to get drunk - take that up with Mr Hemingway. To get centered. To slow the pulse.
It starts with a gin and tonic. Not the Instagram one. The backyard one. The 3pm, lawn-smells-like-heat one.
Soft Ritual: Mediterranean G&T
- Engine or Gin Mare
- Fever Tree Mediterranean tonic
- One slice of lime
- No garnish drama
- No performative ice
- Repeat, if needed
Then comes the Negroni. Pre-dinner. Low. Classic. Except I swap the orange for lemon. Less bitter. More tempo.
But it’s not just about cocktails. It’s about what you’re drinking to feel. That’s where wine comes in.
On hot days when the herbs start to droop in the sun, it’s a glass of Friulano crisp, floral, unbothered. Preferably from Meroi, which tastes like a breeze under the arbor.
If it’s bubbles, I go Franciacorta, which is Italy’s quieter, more delicate, and in my IMHO finer answer to Champagne. Best label? Bellavista. Quiet flex.
When the mortadella hits the board, it’s Lambrusco. Fat-cutting, red, slightly bubbly. It tastes like Italy without the ticket. It tastes like someone poured wine into a Vespa and rode it through Parma.
Lately, I’ve flirted with Chablis, because August is the only time cold French white wine still makes sense. The best I’ve had this summer? Domaine de l'Enclos Chablis. No attitude, just altitude.
And if you’re staying close to home, nothing not even Burgundy Chard grapes touches CheckMate Chardonnay from the Okanagan. If you want to know what a 100-point Canadian whisper tastes like, start there. Big and oaky, but walks with elegance.
None of these drinks are chasing trend.They’re not what the algorithm serves up.They’re what people drink when they want to slow time down by hand.
These aren’t trend drinks. They’re time machines.
Cultural Signal
To drink like it’s still summer is to refuse consensus. It’s a rejection of the fall rush, the marketing calendar, the slide into pumpkin spice conformity.
Behavioral Hook
Drinks are tempo control. To pour slowly is to push back against the time scarcity model. You’re not escaping. You’re editing the moment.
Strategic Implication
The best brands don’t just sell beverages, they sell cadence. They understand that the most powerful product in a high-velocity world is the one that slows you down without numbing you out.
Art That Feels Like August
A dispatch from the walls, the pools, and the spaces where heat becomes memory
Some art tells stories.
But the best late-summer art just sits there radiating mood, holding light, resisting urgency. It doesn’t narrate. It glows.
That’s the kind of art I’ve been drawn to lately. The kind that feels like August: hot on the surface, cool underneath. Emotional without being emotional. Pieces that function like open windows: quiet, intentional, and full of weather.
The Collection (In Progress, of Course)
René Magritte — L’Empire des Lumières
The most haunting visual paradox of all: daylight and night coexisting in a single scene. This is August’s duality: the bright slow burn on the horizon and the creeping cool of what comes next. A painting that doesn’t blink.
Andy Eccleshall — This Too Shall Pass
Moody cloudscapes. Atmospheric tension. A painter who understands that light isn’t just seen, it’s
felt through the ribcage. A reminder that seasons, moods, even real estate markets all of it is just weather.
William Betts — Girl With Red Ball, Miami Beach
Painted through surveillance software. Dots instead of brushstrokes. A figure almost lost in the heat shimmer. This is digital summer: flattened, aesthetic, and a little voyeuristic. You know this girl. She’s in your memories, and your feed.
Alex Katz
Blunt, beautiful daylight. No chiaroscuro. Just the heat of a sun that doesn’t apologize. His figures don’t pose. They exist. Like people you saw once on a boat and never forgot.
Hilary Pecis
California domesticity. Bold interiors. Fruit bowls and striped towels. Every painting feels like a life you used to live or still wish you could.
David Hockney (Pool Paintings)
Still undefeated in the pool category. But also a master of what I’d call static joy (another post but Joy should be a UN Human Right) that thin line where pleasure doesn’t move, doesn’t explain, doesn’t try. It just exists in perfect blue.
Inès Longevial
French-Mediterranean color blocked into curving female forms. If late summer could be painted with a single brushstroke, it would be hers.
Note: The through-line here isn’t technique. It’s temperature. Not brushstrokes, but body heat. These works don’t demand understanding, they invite atmosphere. They don’t ask questions. They hold the weather.
Viewing tip: Look. Close eyes. Feel.
Cultural Signal
Art collecting is tilting from intellectual to emotional. From narrative to vibe. From “What’s it worth?” to “How does it sit in the room when no one’s looking?”
Behavioural Hook
Buyers aren’t chasing storylines. They’re chasing atmosphere. Because in a world drowning in explanation, the most luxurious thing is something that doesn’t need one.
Strategic Implication
The new collector class wants art that functions like music: instantly legible, emotionally coded, personally timed. The moodboard is becoming the portfolio.
A Place to Get Wet, Think Less, and Feel More
A dispatch from the pool deck, the boat bow, and the wild corners of water
Some of the smartest hours I’ve spent (ever) this year were horizontal. Flat-backed. Heat-logged.
The concrete pool deck.The lake rock.The bow of a boat.
Where the water is close, and thinking is far.
I swim every summer. Well, all the time. Not socially. For real. Laps. Resets.
My must dips:
- Second Beach Pool — Public, oceanfront, perfection.
- Kits Pool — Long. Cinematic.
- Havenbadet, Copenhagen — North Atlantic, city center.
- Kennedy Town Pool, HK — Brutalist and blue.
- Allas Sea Pool, Helsinki — Cold plunge gospel.
- Zurich River Baths — So clean it embarrasses brands.
- Unnamed BC lakes, rivers, creeks — Roped swings. Secret codes. Quiet flexes.I won’t name them. That’s the point. The cold, secret ones you hike to. Where there’s a rope swing and maybe a friend. Where the only algorithm is sunlight on the surface.
There’s something about swimming that bypasses language and ego.
It reminds you what your body’s for. What your lungs can hold. How good it feels to just be.
You don’t need an app. Or a reservation. Or a summer body.
You just need the water. And a little time before it’s gone.
Cultural Signal
Swim spots are becoming status markers; not because of who owns them, but because of who accesses them. Clean water. No crowds. No grid. Scarcity, but personal.
Behavioral Hook
Water is mood technology. You’re not swimming to exercise. You’re swimming to feel like yourself again.
Strategic Implication
Developers, hoteliers, designers: your next amenity isn’t square footage. It’s blue margin. People don’t want jacuzzis. They want placid. They want real. They want cold.
Doctors Notes: Always bring a towel. Even if you think you won’t swim. The best swims are unplanned.
The Game Beneath the Game
Everything above: The grilled peach. The perfect song. The good towel. The cold wine. It’s not lifestyle.
It’s signal. It’s editing. It’s status without noise.
In 2025, mood is strategy. The new alpha is atmosphere.
Micro-theses worth remembering:
- Experience Is the New Exclusion
The old status markers, square footage, price per bottle, yacht length haven’t vanished. But they’ve lost heat.
What’s rising instead?
That day you swam in cold water no one told you about. That dinner under a tree with no menu. The perfect coffee in a town with no name. That song you played three times before anyone spoke.
The new exclusion isn’t about access. It’s about knowing.
And knowing takes time. Taste. And being willing to leave the algorithm behind.
- Vibe Is an Asset Class
There are brands built on functionality. And then there are brands built on feeling. We used to call this “aesthetic.” Now it’s something else.
Mood, maybe. Place energy. Untranslatable but unmistakable. If you’re designing homes, marketing projects, launching products, vibe is your IRR.
People don’t want square footage. They want a feeling they can live inside.
And the people who can create that feeling? They’re the most valuable operators in the game.
- Luxury Might Just Be Being Alone (Together)
Not alone as in isolated. Alone as in unbothered. Curated company. Chosen energy.
The exact five people you want to be around when the music’s good, the sun’s low, and the food tastes like it was grown for you.
This is the new status:
- No lineups
- No influencers
- No algorithms
- Just you and the right five people, eating grilled stone fruit in silence and drinking something you brought from home.
That’s not bohemian. That’s power.
What It All Means
These aren’t trends. They’re tectonic.
Capital will follow. Culture already has.
Call it sovereign tempo.
Call it August logic.
Call it power, disguised as leisure.
How to Live After August
You can’t stop September. But you can decide how it shows up in your life.
The trick isn’t to preserve summer. It’s to metabolize it.
How I plan to live after August:
- Gin-infused peaches in the fridge
- Linen until the frost says stop
- Music at dinner, even with windows closed
- Swimming longer, colder
- Lemon in the Negroni
- Towel in the trunk
- A few lines of Eliot taped somewhere near
“Do I dare to eat a peach?”
Prufrock asked.
We answer with action.
Yes, we grow old.
But we also grow bold.And there’s still time.
To finish the wine. To call someone for no reason. To stretch the light just a little further.
In confidence,
—Haute
(Whispers from the gardens of capital, taste, and future terrain.)
