Dear Cell Mates,I've got a big date tonight and I'm not gonna lie to you. It could go either way. Imagine the two extremes flanking the vast spectrum of heterosexual social interaction. Okay, got those in mind? They both, somehow, feel possible, even probable, right now. There's lots to expound upon here but a gentleman's honor dictates discretion. Dig? Dug.
If you thought this blog was dead, join the club. I considered pulling the plug completely numerous times over the past six months but was always stopped by congressional decree. Apparently even some vegetative blogs might still meet the minimum standards of a Living Document. Since it's often impossible for the outside world to tell whether a blog is conscious or not I thought it would only be right to perform CPR as a last ditch effort to try and save HHWT. That stands for Crappy Post Resuscitation for you non-medical-types.
Oh and if you hoped this blog was dead I'm sorry to disappoint you. All I can say is hang in there. And maybe contact your representative in D.C.
I suppose it would be in order for me to pontificate a bit about the reasons why my postings here have dwindled to a slow drip. Let's start by being honest. I was never prolific to begin with. However, what few ideas I did have seemed to find their way out fairly regularly, if not with a feverish frequency. That sap stream of creativity has not hardened of late, but rather been diverted toward two different, even less fruitful directions.
Well maybe three directions but that third one has the saving grace of potentially getting me laid so I would hardly call it fruitless. In fact it's a big, full, fuzzy peach whose ripe sugary juices run down your chin with every hungry mouthful until you reach that tart, dark pit buried deep beneath its sweet, succulent flesh and you accidentally bite down too hard on it and your right incisor feels funny the rest of the day. Umm... Where was I? Ah yes. My creative diversions.
The first diversion is Facebook Status Updates. Thoughts which used to provide the germ for a blog post are now sneezed into cyberspace immediately after formation. These stunted ideas, boiled-down experiences, or extemporaneous observations are rendered for quick consumption into a sentence or three whose soul purpose is to cause my tenuous network of quasi-acquaintances to stop picking their noses long enough to wonder how I could've misspelled “pliant” before moving on to update their Netflix queues.
In the past, pre-Facebook, maybe ten percent of these kernels would incubate and flower into a blog post with all of its full-blown tedium. But now Facebook acts as a creativity abortion clinic, claiming many embryonic ideas before they have a chance to become fully blog-viable. The solutions to this short circuit are so obvious I won't even bother pointing them out.
The second, and no doubt larger, creativity diversion has been the act of writing other things. I have only so much will power, and often none at all, so I generally don't spread it out like the scrapings of an empty jam jar on toast but rather focus it on what's most interesting to me at that moment. This won't change, but by occasionally un-diverting my creative sap flow, say during periods of writer's block for instance, into frivolous blog posts I might just be able to revive this baby. It will make for some horrendously boring posts, no doubt. But hey. What else is new?
That's enough pontificating. Let's get the blog ball rolling. Hmm... what's happened here in Iowa since we last talked? Oh yeah. The skies opened up and pissed forth a deluge of historic proportions. This was definitely a blog-worthy event and my shame is great for not writing some shit about it.
So, dear readers, for those of you who may have wondered about my current state of saturation in this currently saturated State, let me assure you I've been high and dry in NL. Though for a time I was cut off from the rest of civilization, or what passes for it here, by the unprecedented stages of the two rivers betwixt which I reside. Eventually I was able to escape through a rather round about route and played a shit gig with the MSO, but as a result of the flooding much of the local summer work has dried up around here, to ironically invert a pun. However, I never expect to make a dime in the summer anyway so it's all good. *(Note to AN: Yes. I am recycling my note to you. So sue me. But not for plagiarism. You haven't a case. Try Breach of Exclusivity or something like that.)
Continuing with the myopic theme of how the natural disaster affects yours truly, the CRSO has been handed a big bowl of river silt, complete with nitrate runoff, rail trestle rivets and carp carcasses, and everyone in the organization should expect to spend this upcoming season with spoon in hand practicing their Oliver Twist impressions. Normally the CRSO is a rock; always rehearsing and concertizing in the same place: The Paramount, which was submerged in the swollen Cedar River for days. I'm not sure about the future of the Paramount beyond the fact that nobody will be playing there this season. It was a lovely old theater. Yes, maybe a bit small and, okay, it had some disconcerting echoes. But it will be sorely missed this year, a year with Beethoven 9 on the docket, as we will now no doubt be shuffling between even smaller college and high school auditoriums. If there never was a need for a chamber orchestra/barbershop quartet arrangement of the Choral Symphony before, there is now.
The other orchestras of this fine state are likely only impacted by the flooding through the ripples of their shared personnel with CRSO and the current fluidity of its season schedule. One can only hope that some amount of accommodation will be granted in regards to this. In freelancing, conflicts are the killer. There are enough weeks in the season to make a great living, if you can fill them with work. And there's enough work in the area to make a good living, if only you can schedule it. But conflicts whittle it all down to just a plain old living.
Well, that's all for now my dear fellows. Time to get ready for ecstasy or ignominy. But probably something in between. More to come...
Love,
Not your Mom
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