May 1st and May 2nd I spent all day both days not writing a poem. I continued not writing poetry on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. It turns out, no poetry was written into the days and the week ahead, so that today, on the 10th of May, I have written not a single poem. Don’t get me wrong. After writing a poem every day for 30 days, it’s not like I’m tired of writing poetry (does anyone ever tire of doing the thing they want more than any other thing to do?). It’s just that I needed a break, a break, maybe, to write a paragraph, or a letter, or to dabble in fiction again, or to return to a project in progress, and to relieve the pressure (not that anyone’s holding their breath for it) of posting something to the blog every day for 30 days.
But wouldn’t you know it, I found another daily thing to do with words and pictures. If you’re a Facebook user, you may have noticed a recent spate of record album challenges. Musician and music fan that I am, I couldn’t let that one go. The rules are, typically, to post an album cover of a record that had a significant impact on your life–just the album cover, no comments, no explanation. Nominate a friend to play.
I bent the rules quite a bit. While I was nominated by a friend and was super willing to participate, I find somewhat distasteful the practice of nominating friends for things. They don’t need my nomination. If they’d been paying attention, surely this social media game would have been on their radar, and nobody really needs to be “chosen” to participate in a thing like this. Just do it, if you like, right? So I didn’t nominate anybody. And I didn’t post 10 records over ten days. I posted closer to 30 over 15 days. And I didn’t post just the album cover; I posted a selfie of me holding the album cover. And I didn’t forgo the commentary. I felt it might be interesting to see, for those who cared, some little explanation of how these particular records intersected with my life, why I loved them, how they influenced me, and why they matter. So I did that, too. It turned out to be kind of a cool little series, so don’t be surprised if a version of that Facebook activity makes its way on to the blog. Kind of a “light” version of an album listening project I started years ago and never finished because it was insanely hard. This may be the happy medium, the middle way, a sound compromise, to that crazy project.
Now what? Onward and upward. Here’s to music. It has saved my life.
michael jarmer 