Hey Look, I Forgot To Add A Title — Again!

It’s been time to write a post for a while now.  Hell, it’s been past time for a while now.  But…

Yea, there’s that damned but again.  God, I hate that fuckin’ word.

What sentence, statement, wish, or thought ends well that has the word “but” figured prominently in it?

Ahem.  Anyway…

I still find the time to write nowadays.  In between meetings and research and accounting and planning — and all of the other things that crowd the top of your To Do list when you’re opening your own business — I still try to make time to write.  Unfortunately, there really isn’t anyplace near me where I’m comfortable enough to sit in the corner and lose myself in the words.

Well, not until the Depot opens.  Then…

Then, all bets are off.  And, shit, do I love that thought.

When worries about costs and fees fill my days…

When thoughts about lights and tables and chairs keep me up at night…

When stress about licenses and certificates and approvals wake me in a cold sweat…

I picture myself sitting in the corner and writing.  And I smile.

The joy this whole process has brought cannot be overstated, by the way.  Oh, not just my joy — and trust me, there ain’t really a limit on just how much freaking joy this brings me — but the simple, honest joy of others, too.

The joy of my friends in this new home of mine at the promise of a place built to bring something  different — something real — to a town with little on offer besides corporate schlock…

The joy of my dad’s friend at seeing his grandfather’s picture still hung on the wall of the vestibule…

My dad’s own joy at seeing the happiness grow in a son more known for cynicism and writing about the dark side of life…

The joy of that son at building a legacy — a legacy not just for a father, but for a grandfather and a great-grandfather…

Look, if I don’t stop now, I’m gonna go all writerly and start trying to cram a series of profound thoughts and emotions into a two-hundred flashfiction piece.  I think I’ll skip that, for the moment.

I’m going to skip ahead to the end of the story, actually.  I don’t know about other writers, but I write — and think! — in images.  Most of the time, when I write a piece, I have a final image I want to leave in the heads of my readers.  That finally image is always intended and designed to elicit certain specific emotions and thoughts.  

On this blog, I tend to replace that final written image with a musical thought.  I use a song in place of a mental picture to try and convey some of the thoughts and emotions that went into the creation of the post.  Honestly, the best way to really understand what I write here is to listen — and pay attention — to the music I post.

Oh, it doesn’t always work.  Sometimes my mind — and my writing — changes direction in ways my ear can’t keep up with.  But today…

Well, if today’s post ended up being a short bit about joy, rather than what I first set out to write, the song I initially thought to build around still holds some very real elements of truth.  Plus…well…it’s really fucking good.  It is, in fact, one of the two or three most evocative songs I can think of (and I can think of a lot of songs).  It also happens to be one of my favorites…and I don’t mean just from this specific band. For me, this song stands up there among other, far more well-known songs & bands.

{Musical Note — just turn the volume up.  No, really, turn it all the way up and let the music wash over you!  That is how I write, by the way, with music blaring in my ears and the world held at bay.  That is when I write the most — when I feel the most — when the music is felt as much as heard, and the world is nothing but a distant tug, easily ignored.}

It’ll Come

Want to know what’s really hard?  Lighting.

No, seriously…freaking lighting is a nightmare.  Table lamps, chandeliers, recessed, track, indirect, spot, flood…

Lights are, to all intents and purposes, flat out evil.

Have you ever tried to find the perfect pendant lights for a brewery in a 100-year-old train station?  Good lord, I feel like a 14 year old trying to find just the right outfit for his first date…

*sigh*

See, this is how places end up with basic fluorescent lighting that doesn’t only look like shit, it also pisses off the customers: it’s just easier that way.  There are companies out there whose entire business model is based on our society’s subservience to FOMO.*  But not these lighting folks, nosireebob.  They’re just the opposite; they build their model off our willingness to surrender and simply settle.  They know someone shopping for new commercial fixtures is likely starting a new business.  They know that particular someone is going to be stressed and overwhelmed.  They know timelines and costs are probably already out the window by the time the buyer gets to lighting, so they base their marketing and product selection on that other little nugget of societal gold: “Stop dithering and just buy something, ferfuckssake!”

*Fear Of Missing Out, if you’re wondering.

It’s insidious.  It’s evil.  And, of course, it works.

Crap, I wish I had known more about sales and marketing when I was in high school and college — I wouldn’t have left “those” parties and bars alone quite so often.

Ahem.  Never mind.

The good news out of all this is that I am at the point where lights are a concern.  Freakin’ lights! That right there is progress, if I do say so myself!  Remember way back when I told you about how I really am able to write — really write — only in taprooms?  And when I hinted about becoming my own best friend in that regard?  Yeah, that “really far down the road” ain’t lookin’ so far away now…

Of course, then I just have to find (or manufacture) the time to actually step away from everything else and just write.  Ah well, it’ll come…it’ll come…

Ray Bradbury was really good at titles.  Yeah, the man could write, too…but he truly ruled at creating titles.  My favorite title of his?  Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Change your perception of the second word to our modern slang interpretation, and…oh my, does that title work even better for me right now!

If you’re curious, by the way: Desmond Depot Brewhouse

{Musical Note — Let’s go with a band I haven’t posted on here before…

Edit: the writer created this song while backpacking alone through a strange country. It was a song about alienation, and missing home — and also about hope. It is also, of course, a song about the cost of being away from home. This is, when you get down to it, a song all of us wanderers and hobos can identify with.}

Giving This Up

I tried.  I really did.

I tried to give up this blog.

I cancelled the account.  I voided the renewal payment.  I tried…

And it lasted all of three days.  Shit, even my one pathetic attempt to give up coffee lasted longer than that!

Look, for most of my adult life I’ve lived according to DeNiro’s wisdom in Heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”

I talk and joke about not buying in to nostalgia.  I talk and joke about being the hobo who just ups and abandons everything from time to time.  I will even occasionally talk — but not joke — about the very real fact that I never let get myself too attached…to anything, or anyone. Yeah, yeah, I know — some aspiring therapist could probably put the next five generations through college trying to fix me…

Look, I’ve lost everything before.  I’ve lost everything, and I decided in the aftermath that I would never again give in to the weakness of having anything or anyone I was afraid to lose.

Okay, fine, so those were the sentiments of a hurt, terrified idiot trying to be all edgy and emo, but still…

Yeah, they were pure bullshit then, too.

I just can’t give it up.  I would love to say something pseudo-insightful like “I have poured too much of my heart and my psyche — of my self — into the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written on this site to give it up.”  I would love to say that, but not even my ex-marketing-weasel soul could write that without an overwhelming dose of irony.

Oh, you and I both know just how much of me goes into my words here.  Just like we both know just how much I need these words to keep my sanity.  In almost every story/piece I write, I allude in one way or another to that demon I fear so much, to that lonely night and the rope…

I’ve held that demon off for a long time now.  I’ve held it off, and the words are a big part of how, but that still ain’t the whole story.

Writing is a rush.  Even when you miss and struggle, there is still that dopamine-flood that is so addictive.  When you nail it?  Oh fuck, when you nail it…

Look, I stopped counting countries a while ago because it got to be too much.  Forget countries, I’ve chased fun — chased sex and drugs and abandon — in more than half of this world’s fucking time zones.  I’ve played hockey against NHL players.  I’ve dived on WW2 wrecks.  Crawled into occupied bear dens.  Successfully completed itemized tax returns.

I’ve done all of that and more.  Far, far more.  And still, even with all of that, there ain’t much that can compare to the feeling of nailing it with my words.  It doesn’t happen often, but when it does…

When it all really works…

Shit, like a heroin junkie, you just need more.  The more you get, the more you need.  The more you need, the harder it is to get.

The number of times I’ve legit hit that high…

The number of times I’ve really nailed it…

I don’t care how few those are, how could I ever give that up?

{Musical Note — yep, it’s an old Simon & Garfunkel tune. Nope, I don’t like their version. Gaslight Anthem has a couple of versions that I really do like, however. The album version that I’m using here works best with the post above…}

That Terrible Inertia

It’s a tough choice right now.  Obviously, I haven’t been keeping the blog up.  Obviously, I have left vacant my seat at the bar.  Far too often have I left it vacant.

I wish I could say the words had stopped because there were no more words…  Well, at least I wish I could say it was because there was no more need for the words.  But that would be a lie.  There still is a need.  There still are thoughts and emotions and dreams crying out to be written.

There still are my ghosts, haunting the back of my mind, crying out to be heard…

Crying out to be written.

But I’m a creature of habit.  I’m a creature of habits far more bad than good, by the way — one need only look at my current waistline to know that.  Writing is, for me, a thing of habits, too.  It is a thing of momentum, and of focus.  When everything is clicking — when I am writing with that full momentum behind me — it is an unstoppable urge.  I could no more stop my fingers on the keyboard than I could stop my lungs.

When I stop, however…

When the inertia takes over, when Newton’s 1st Law is proven all too true about objects at rest…

Yeah, to start up again after you have surrendered all movement?  Yeah, that’s the hard part.  Something has to act on that object to get it moving.  Something has to act on me…

To put it in plot terms, there needs to be — yet again! — some inciting incident.  In our stories, out protagonists start out at equilibrium.  Whether that stasis is a thing of happiness or misery doesn’t matter, they are at rest until something or someone* acts on them to change that equilibrium into the motion required for both plot and character development. 

*Us writers, we’re the stone-throwing, stasis-breaking bastards that ruin everything.  When you get right down to it, we are entropy incarnate.

I’m right back at Chapter-freaking-One.  I’m right back at “It was a dark and stormy night…” and I don’t like it one bit.

Of course, there had to be an inciting incident to even get me going this far — how many thoughts and urges have I let pass without so much as scratching out a single word in the past months?  Too many to count.  So what was, that thing that drove me to write?  That drove me to reconsider my silence?  That made me acknowledge my own inertia?

The bill.

No, honestly, it was the invoice for my upcoming renewal for this seat at the bar.  Now look, a  blog is cheap to own and run.  I know this.  Hell, you probably know this, too.  A custom web address with a .bar domain?  Yeah, that ain’t so cheap.

So I looked at my notes and drafts to check if it was worth it to keep things up.  That’s when I noticed just how long it had been since I had posted a piece here.

Then, of course, I had to go and look at the dates on my fiction stuff…

*sigh*

Those ghosts…they’re screaming at me right now.

Even with all the screaming; even with all the voices; even with all the need…

I still can’t make up my mind.

{Musical Note — because, dammit, there has to be music!}