Tuesday 3/7/23
More work on "Big Bob and Little Bob." In 2019, it was a 2100 word story that was folksy. I don't mean lighthearted. What I mean is it had a certain get in and get out quality. Our Town has a folksy side like that. The story didn't belabor, didn't stay too long in any area. Kept it moving. It was kind of a prose folk song of a suburban relationship. I didn't want to lose that tone. But it wasn't full enough. The story itself.
The tone is still there, but the story has changed. It's getting up there now at 5600 words. But it still moves and hums, but with breeze. Sitting at the desk Sunday morning I was writing this part to a part and I could not stop crying. I had to stand up, regather, sit down again. Eventually I just said, "Okay, leave this for the rest of today, look at it again in a day or two," because it was just so powerful. It also helps to reorient. The eyes reset themselves to a starter position. Eyes in the starter position are trustworthy eyes. They're less caught up in anything, they have less of an allegiance.
There's a part about a Quiet Riot song--a cover, actually--of "Cum on Feel the Noize" that is like some prayer to God or not God but something beyond us that is us. I don't see how someone could ever hear that song again after reading this story and not cry. It's a Quiet Riot song for fuck's sake. You'd think it was Bach at his most inspired. But that's the transformative power of true fictive art. The true revelatory power. As something is transformed, something is revealed. It's like it was there all along. The story isn't going to get much longer if it gets any longer. Now it's about care.
Did 100 push-ups, ran 4000 stairs Sunday. Faltered yesterday. Sunday marked 2429 days, or 347 weeks, without a drink. I saw how on here the other day I managed to update that as 246 weeks 1722 days. Put it in, didn't even notice. I usually fix these things. It's hard doing so much at once and having constant stress.
There is no food in here. Actually nothing in the freezer. I haven't been to Trader Joe's in a while. When I do go, it's not like I can really stock up and fill things without a car. It's two bags. I should go twice. I have eaten the same depressing fare many nights in a row. I need to take better care of myself, too. Be more regimented.
The Celtics lost again last night. Three in a row. People seem more troubled by it than I am. They aren't good losses. The two before especially. But they had guys out last night. Plus, teams turn it off and on in the NBA. I don't like it, but that's how it is. Football and hockey teams don't really do it that way. They go all out--or that's the plan, anyway--every game. Baseball teams don't go all out because you can't though they do in the postseason. You don't play every play hard, and certain days the line-ups are filled in such that that team is kind of signing off on a loss. The NBA is moody. Feel like it, don't feel like it, play, don't play. Looks like the Celtics will be the two seed. That's more concerning I'd say than how they're playing. That deciding game at home means more in the NBA than anywhere else. Brian Scalabrine sounds despondent during some of these last few games. A worried man.
Yesterday was Wes Montgomery's centennial and I wrote a feature for JazzTimes that is in the new issue. It came in the mail. I wish they had put the piece up online yesterday because that would have been a good time for people to see it.
Books are what matter right now. There are none coming out or scheduled to come out. There are just a lot of books of a number of different kinds. A solution would not seem to be to create more books. And yet it would also seem a solution. I don't have a solution. I just have trying right now. But it would seem like creating another kind of book would only be a problem because that's just one more book with nowhere to go, but as these fine jazz pieces mount, I can't put them into The Root of the Chord, which is already pretty long, and I don't want six pieces in there about one artist, as strong and different as those pieces may be.
Or is that okay? Others don't do it, but I'm not other writers, and do I spend too much energy worrying about how different something I do is? I can split the book into two books. But when would they come out when the one that is here might as well not be coming out for 138 years? If that. So I do all of that work, I go through all of The Root of the Chord--which believe me, needs many goings over and fixing--and determine what stays and what goes, find the balance for that book, as the other book is made and balanced itself, one called Play the Words: Jazz Writings. And just hope it works out eventually. As with everything, as with all I write and all of these works and books I have and am making.
I wish I had someone interesting to talk to. Or, if not someone outrightly interesting, someone I wanted to hear from or reach out to.
I hate putting people up on here. Publishing people. Absolutely hate it. But more of that is coming. More of it than ever, unfortunately. Has to be done. It's like being in a war that has to be fought. There is no choice, unless you want to be conquered and destroyed and pillaged and raped. I don't want to be those things, and I'm not going to let people do that to me. The letter over the weekend was to The Wall Street Journal. That's how I conduct myself. That's how I sound. That's my level of professionalism. It's never been bad behavior from me. It's been more patience and tolerance as the years of abuse and discrimination mount than anyone in history could manage. I believe that. I think that's an accurate statement.
More work, too, on "An Aversion to Blood."