On the Twenty-ninth Day of 2025…

…I discover that Jim in Percival Everett’s retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is fully literate. He’s read Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke when he’s alone in Judge Thatcher’s library, and on Jacksons Island, after he gets bit by a rattlesnake, he has conversations with these literary and philosophical giants in fever-induced hallucinations, and is overheard by Huck Finn. Huck says to Jim, “You sho talk funny in yer sleep,” and “what does hierarchy mean?”–to which Jim replies, “What? Ain’t no such word.”

I did some reading today. It felt good. Healthful. I wonder if it might be a reasonable goal to finish reading James before February arrives. It’s a bit ambitious for a slow poke like me, about 250 pages in two days. I’ll make no promises, but I like to write about things I want to do–it seems that there might be a correlation between saying a thing or writing a thing and the likelihood of actually getting it done. As soon as I wrote, early January, that I wanted to compose a blog entry every day in the month, it started to happen. Yesterday I wrote that I wanted to seek a therapist; this morning I made an appointment. I’ve said a bunch of times that I want to be less sucked in by the news of the day; reading literature seems like a viable remedy.

Writing every day, and not rereading everything I have published previously, makes way for some repetition, methinks. Certain obsessions come to the fore again and again, I’m sure. I think I have said before, for instance, that writing this type of thing each and every day necessarily (at least for me) takes time away from the more creative endeavors of poetry and fiction. So I’m hoping that the daily practice will bleed over into February, and in that month I will be making progress on one of three long unfinished writing projects. I might drop off the blog altogether for a while, like I do a few times a year, in order to focus my attention on other things. Or, maybe I have to grapple some more with why I won’t publish fiction on the blog. Maybe that’s a thing that needs to change.

On the music front, three big projects present themselves. First, I’ve got to mix some demos for the cover band, because apparently there are gig opportunities that are dependent upon audio samples. Okay, we’ll play that game. The demos are tracked, I just need to make them pretty for consumption. Second, Adam and I are 13 new songs and counting into the material for a brand new Project MA album. I’m highly motivated by this. The songs are strong, I think, a bit more experimental, kind of orchestral in a way that the first record was not, you know, strings, timpani, mallets, embellishments to Adams bass guitar, my drums, his titles, my wacky words, my voice. Again, on the idea of taking steps in words to increase the chance of making something happen, I reached out to my graphic arts friend, gave him a title and a concept, and he’s created an album cover for our non-existent album. Now it HAS TO HAPPEN. Likewise, I have been brainstorming with my partner René, the other half of the Here Comes Everybody band, about how to celebrate a 20 year anniversary of our Submarines album. Remastered, limited-run anniversary edition on vinyl, with an accompanying illustrated novella, a multi-media presentation if there ever was such a thing. Anyone?

There’s a strange cat outside my window just tearing back and forth in the garden beds. I think I’ll see what this little guy is up to. Until tomorrow!