Deadline trumps all. I wouldn’t exactly say I phoned it in these last couple months, but I couldn’t commit to the material and the deadline won. I had to go with what I had and catch-as-catch-can it while taking an uninvited houseguest, learning a new repertoire on a new instrument and moving. All’s well now I guess. I had a little downtime yesterday and spent it just shy of the brink and at my favorite place in the back of my brain before I made the drive to Dripping Springs and reported to my bar captain, the trolling wench. I sit here this morning with little to nothing wrong facing the green window at the writing desk, sipping the dark stuff with the fan blowing overhead. Realizing it’s only been 2 months I been remiss feels a little better if not great. The worst thing in the world for me is if my work suffers as I’m sure you can understand.
I set up my life in service to Art. I took the example of working class writers and poets and take jobs that take the least from me mentally. That might mean I’m exhausted but it’s easily remedied. The kind of jobs I take won’t be calling me after hours and if they do they’d be wise to just hang up and save it for the shop. In short I get paid by the hour and when I’m not on the clock I’m as good as gone. The idea is to make it back to the place and bang it out on a manual or electric typewriter. If my work suffers than I’m only a bartender and suffering the hard luck hits of a Boheme life for naught. Point is in the midst of learning upright bass, housing and carting around an uninvited guest, working 2 jobs and moving and going on tour, I had to fly by my seat on here and go with posts I’d have rather sat on and anyway took more time to revise before I hit PUBLISH. So I’m here today, at the writing desk, putting a little time in before I woodshed on the bass and get my set together for a house party in Wimberly this week. I’m hoping for the best writing this and at the very least making sure this week’s post is written well before Thursday, when it’s not crunch time and I have to go with whatever I wrote because the 40-hour work weekend is looming or I’ve got to rehearse for a gig that pays $50 a man.
It’s a good life. Besides having to remind myself of that constantly I can’t complain. Though I often do, as the weeks burn by and I haven’t done the work, that is–put in the time. My posts at the Flake News are a great example of how work can flow if you work at it. My appearance on Dig This! in the summer of ’18 as well. I sound informed and it’s on the breath–everything from the stolen election of ’00 to media and the end of the world. You can refute a well-informed writer but you must esteem him as an adversary first. Hell I’m glad I got those posts out but it’s not enough. Well it was enough but not what I want. I hate to be hacky, on the page or up there at the mic. I was rusty Friday, at the Hearsay Poetry Open Mic and it was one of those nights you got to just get through, not exactly a bad night and certainly better than my worst shows of the past. Some nights you can only try not to suck. It’s only rock and roll, but I wasn’t prepared. Just like I wasn’t prepared to read in Brooklyn last month, printing out material in a FedEx on Market Street in Philly an hour before I had to get onboard a Peter Pan to NYC. I made the nut in Williamsburg and read to 6 or so people who didn’t seem to care and I spoke and read last Friday and sold a book to Poet Christina Jackson.
I’ll get back at it–early mornings at the ARCH and St. David’s, corporate lunch in the triple-digit heat and rehearsing on the doghouse, really digging in to that thing and playing music simply because it keeps the depression away. It sure as shit does. Even if I fell out of love with songwriting, playing the bass calms me, sets me to rights much the way writing does. It sucks when this blog or the Poem Of The Week becomes something I have to do or even worse something I need to fit in between rehearsing and working part and full time as a computer lab tech and banquet captain. It all sucks, I won’t lie, being conscripted to this life but it’s better than the alternative. At least I keep telling myself that. I hate always having to be somewhere and I’m coping by telling myself I wanted everything I have. Half way through a slipshod life and burning everywhere, piquant with lust, dark and bitter and too stubborn to die.
Going for the Throat 