Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on.”
I have Yaqui to thank for this marvelous take on our beloved Marvin Gaye. The song and its lyrics resonate in such a way that I couldn’t help but snatch this one up and present it to ya’ll on this beautiful day. Marvin’s voice in the beginning feels like summer. I wish I could pinpoint exactly why it feels like that, it might have something to do with the soft and subtle beat introduction, the way the song is re-imagined in such a way that makes it feel like it might have been released by Marvin Gaye himself…But more importantly, it feels like that tune you put on the speakers in the middle of a cold Winter day, just before sunset.
Reminisce.
Of when the sunsets would come later in the day. How they’d align perfectly with the trek back from the beach, sun-kissed, the love making of the sand on your body which leaves lines that you only give attention to when you’re in the proper light of the bathroom before a shower to rinse your hair. Or maybe you don’t rinse your hair, leave the golden shimmer, the physical embodiment of sea-breeze on you. The scent of a new lover stays.
The speakers are playing your song, and it’s this. And all you can ask yourself is, what’s goin’ on?
Right now you’re deep in thought, memory snapshots fill your eye space. And as soon as the beat drops within the first thirty seconds, you are totally gone. Soaking in the place elsewhere that your mind once lived in. That memory only lives inside now. And the only release for you, is this track.
I hope this happens for you, too. Indulge for a moment, if only.
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On (S Man Remix)