Category: Thinking, thinking

Tuesday’s Theme Music

I was walking and thinking yesterday (amazing that I didn’t hurt myself), pursuing a flotilla of random thoughts when a scene between a traveler and a Tesla driver caught my eye. Traveler is the name given to homeless around here. Homeless is an easy term for a complex situation. Local agencies have interviewed a number of homeless and discovered that some are homeless by choice and enjoy traveling from area to area along the I-5 corridor. Ashland doesn’t welcome travelers but the community strives to enjoy everyone has a few meals a week and shelter during cold weather.

I don’t know what the conversation was about between the Tesla driver and the traveler. I knew the man was a traveler because I’ve seen him before and had bought him food a few times. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and thought he’d moved on. Maybe he did, and came back.

Watching the exchange, though, lyrics from the 1968 Sly and the Family Stone song, “Everyday People” came to mind. I feel fortunate that Sly and the Family Stone was making music then, as they released several terrific albums. This song is just one that I remember and enjoy.

The song’s sentiment is timeless.

Sometimes I’m right and I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song
The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then
Makes no difference what group I’m in
I am everyday people, yeah, yeah

There is a blue one
Who can’t accept the green one
For living with a fat one
Trying to be a skinny one
Different strokes
For different folks

And so on and so on
And scooby dooby dooby
Oh sha sha
We got to live together

I am no better and neither are you
We are the same, whatever we do
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then
You can’t figure out the bag I’m in
I am everyday people, yeah yeah

There is a long hair
That doesn’t like the short hair
For being such a rich one
That will not help the poor one
Different strokes
For different folks

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Yeah, we’re all everyday people.

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The Muses’ Pitches

Things went well for an unplanned process, defying expectations. I finished revising and editing a novel, felt I something to submit, and began that process. I finished all that just in time to fly across country to visit with my Mom. I won’t say how old she is but she remembers listening to the radio to get news of World War II. She’s recovering from shoulder replacement surgery and it was her birthday. It gave me a chance to visit with sisters and their families, too.

It turned into one of those visits that makes me nostalgic, one that finds me wishing that I lived closer to these family members and socialized with them more often. I left that part of my home before I had a driver’s license, so much of their living and growing has been without my presence. They’ve grown into people that I never foresaw, and their extended families of children and grandchildren amaze and delight me.

Now back home, I’m ready to begin a new writing project. Four concepts have reached the finals. As I walk about, live life, and drink coffee, muses have taken up representation of each concept. They’re pushing hard on their babies.

All of them would be fun and challenging to write, (otherwise, why bother, am I right?). One goes into a completely different direction. Another continues my recent trend of writing ideas. A third concept returns me to write another of the Life Lessons with Savanna series (two books have been written and self-published). The fourth concept takes me into the murder thriller realm.

All are books I’d like to read. That makes them books I’d like to write. I’ve given each concept some BRAM (Biological Random Access Memory), sketching scenes, forming characters, and outlining rough plots and arcs in my head. As I contemplate my choices, I remember how many other concepts I have stashed in my head, waiting for daylight. I feel bad for ignoring them but no muses are stepping up to rep them. I imagine the muses that stood for them before sitting around in their bathrobes, drinking beer and wine from coffee cups in small, cluttered sitting rooms, reading newspapers and magazines, watching television, and noshing on snacks. They’ve aged and lost hair, and aren’t the beautiful young muses that they once were. They’re not interested in generating the energy to dress and give a proper presentation. “Another time,” they say with a wave of their cups and food, as they continue with the activity.

Sounds like I’m running an old muse home in my head.

After writing all of this, I sipped coffee, did a stroll and mulled the projects. The muses made their pitches again. One concept was chosen.

Here I go. Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song was invited in by the group’s name. Traveling and planning, I was mapping a way through time squeezes. With squeeze in my mental stream, Squeeze’s 1981 song, “Tempted” soon began flowing.

Enjoy.

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Poor, Poor, Cynical Me

After writing a snubnopsis – a typo that caught me off guard. Freudian slip? My dark side asserted its opinion about having an agent read it and react positively? Don’t know.

Okay, to begin again, after writing the synopsis and submitting twenty queries, I was alternatively discouraged and excited. I’m told that all writers endure these cycles. I endure mine in edgy desperation, not sharing it with anyone outside of my posts. Not asking for a shoulder, mind you, just stating facts.

I’m always disappointed in the submission process. One, some agents are so nebulous and wishy-washy about what they’re looking for, offering scant evidence of what’ll attract them. Many fall back on that old expression, “good writing”. They know it when they read it.

Two, some of them offer a huge buffet of wants. They want it all. Send it all to them! Hurry.

Anyway, though, that done, the writing mind struck out on a hunt for a new story. I’m due to write a third book in a series, after e-publishing the first two. The problem that I face is that I’ve outlined the third book, so it feels like it’s already written, or something. Muses are sirens with other ideas. That’s why I’ve eschewed outlining. I prefer pantsing. It feels like the territory is always new and fresh when I follow an unplotted, organic trail.

Oh, boy. What I know, though, is that I want and need to write, to begin again, to follow the muses, find a story, and write it. I dislike the downtown. I’m addicted to drifting through the day, imagining characters and their situations. As usual, after careful consideration, I’ll do something impulsive. Then I’ll start writing like crazy.

Flight is boarding now. Later, gators.

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A Little Off

Batting his ears, he wriggled his eyes, crossed his nostrils, and lowered his chest to think, popping another leaf into his belly-button as he did. Something was different today, but he couldn’t put a toe on it.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I’d been blue last week, you know, a few days of WTF and WTH coursing through me as I read news, experienced disappointment and weariness, took a jaunt down what’s-the-point lane, and pouted a bit in the pity-poor-me cul-de-sac. Yeah, a helluva neighborhood. Other streets include, who-cares boulevard and nobody-gives-a-damn avenue. We share drinks at the I’m-tired-of-this-shit cafe.

Some blues music periodically trickled through the street. Eventually, a song that was released in 1965, when I was nine, gained momentum in the stream. That would be Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. I listened to covers from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Harry Nilsson, and others, good work all, but the original’s rhythm and tone carried me most.

So here it be, from me to thee, courtesy of technology and Youtube. Gotta admit, watching young Bob and his signs puts a smile on my face.

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Thoughts

We saw the light

and thought it was fire,

held in glass

strung by a wire.

We smelled the smoke

and thought it was grass,

we felt lit

and fell on our ass.

We heard a song

and thought it was love,

we tasted tears

and thought it was salt.

We saw the light

but it was too far away.

We said, “Let’s start tomorrow.”

But tomorrow never came.

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Together

I lost you,

you found me,

kicking in the door

that I tried to seal.

Dancing on dreams,

living on smoke,

pennies away

from always being broke.

The crystal was fine,

but we drew lines,

toking on what was right,

and what should be denied.

Never agreeing

in sounds too soft to hear,

straining for space

when we tried to get near.

Blinded by lights

that could’ve been love or hate,

we made our way past others,

knowing too much too little

too late.

 

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sitting in the chasm between writing projects, dealing with submissions, hunting for acceptance, stamping on depression, and resisting regression. I walk along on slippery wet leaves, gold and red, fallen from trees, I hunt the moment and a song, something to sing to take me along.

I depend on music like I depend on coffee, computers, and the net, soft addictions to deal with what’s left, and what I hope to do and be, striving to leave a little self to the world’s history.

Into the mind stream jumps the Kinks, squeezing alongside Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and snippets of other song links, taking me back to decades gone, sometimes to people and selves where I felt like I more belonged. I offer you a fantasy, a song to help you escape, “A Rock and Roll Fantasy” from nineteen seventy-eight, a time when we had more hope and direction, and people weren’t warning us about civil war, strife, and sedition.

More coffee, stat.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

There I was, walking along, dealing with the cesspools of worry and anxiety collecting in my head, happy as a friggin’ lark, when in comes Ben Howard’s song, “The Fear” (2011).

Oh I’ve been worrying,
that my time is a little unclear,
I’ve been worrying,
that I’m losing the ones I hold dear,
I’ve been worrying,
that we all,
live our lives,
in the confines of fear.

h/t to Lyricsmania.com

Good walking tune for its beat, and it fits today’s partly cloudy, sometimes sunny, chilly, warm, blustery weather that taunts us with fall and worries us about winter.

Whatever.

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