I continue to not post, week after week. My only defense is the best one I could possibly have: I’m playing in public.
Last weekend was another open mic-er, at the Pleasantville venue. I was mediocre on most stuff, with occasional good moments on some. But I think I learned a lot and got asked to play with two different people: Jody Stokhamer, for clarinet, and Pete ??? for guitar. I’ll try to do both.
What I learned is everything I would need to do to keep my “act” a single: develop a ‘tween tunes rap; get some stylistic variety in the set list; get someone else in the act (which would make it no longer a single, wouldn’t it? If only…); get some vocals going; slow it all down (the variety and rap would help with that), and; figure out a way to either get automatic enough on my material that I don’t make mistakes I can’t easily recover from and/or come up with a recovery strategy that doesn’t leave me fumpfing around on stage saying “shit” under my breath, making faces and employing body language that says “unprofessional” and “out of control.” Other that, Mrs. Lincoln…
On an entirely different subject…I’m submitting a couple of my short stories, The Year I Rebuilt the Valiant and Sveta Maric, to as many literary reviews and journals as I can find. I’m doing this alphabetically, one or two a day, a couple times a week. I’m up to New England Review. It shouldn’t take the place of blogging, but it seems to have. In a way, the cover letters sort of satisfy the writing need I still have, lame as that sounds.
And finally, for several weeks I was preparing proposals for a lecture-lab instruction course in guitar playing that would tie different styles and movements to the historical and social contexts they came out of. This would be taught in the continuing ed or extension programs of local colleges. It’s a shot in the dark, but I have to take it, and I think I did a good job of putting application packages together and getting them out the door.
I will get back to blogging, but to be completely honest, not until I become less preoccupied with actually performing, something I’ve wanted to try to do for decades.
any luck, I should have a photo or two of my last outing in a few days, and I’ll go back and put it in here.
If you’ve stayed with me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t, thank you. I’ll try to reward you with more hoary stories and lore of yore. (Like that last little play on sounds of words? I did, but I’m a self-absorbed asshole).
