A Good Start

A gorgeous morning.

Meg is off to an organizing meeting for a new and so-far-promising alliance of activist organizations, unions and faith groups – something we’ve been discussing quite a bit lately, and both are quite keen to see come to fruition.

Mica is back with us after a week at her mom’s, and I’m super thankful to have my daughter home and the family complete again.

Finished our reading-aloud of Tess of the D’Urbervilles – finally – and started on Michael Ondaatje’s poem-story, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Outlaws, poetry and reading aloud to one another in the bath – is there any better combination?

Woke this morning to a fresh-rained city and the sun breaking through, which inspired me to get out into the backyard and clear the masses of grass that have been growing out into the alley, so we can instead put in some planter boxes and use that as growing space for lovely climbing green things. Waiting now for a delivery of several yards of mulch, which means tomorrow we can really start the re-do of the yard, replacing grass with mulch and six four-by-four planters and pathways and quiet sitting spaces with birds and bees come spring.

Thinking we’ll get active as legal observers during the Olympic disaster to come – Pivot Legal and The BC Civil Liberties Association looking for folks willing to monitor the cops and watch for civil rights violations and general security thugishness, which seems a very worthy thing for us to do.

A day with my kid, an evening with my love when Mica heads out to  birthday party, books and converstion, little projects coming to fruition, a growing home and a seed of activist mobilization.

Y’know, it ain’t all bad. A day could start out a whole lot worse than this.

Transit and Tories

Thinking on the news, after a bus-ride to work with a large coffee and a couple of Vancouver’s free dailies.

During the together-portion of our commute, Meg and I chatted about the idea – floated by Translink and fought by city councilors in the burbs – that local bridges could be made toll-zones to fund the regional transit authority.

And then, as I left my girl and hopped on bus number two, I find in the paper a little piece featuring Larry Frank’s thoughts on the matter. Larry is a prof at UBC, one of the world’s top public transportation experts, and a guy I know quite well. So I was pleased to see that his comments were pretty much in line with what Meg and I had been discussing.

Short version? Tolls may not be a bad idea, and can be an important piece of a two-prong agenda – to finance infrastructure and upkeep for an expanded public system while driving up the cost of cars and so encouraging more folks to drop them as commuter vehicles. The key, though, is whether this really is the objective, or whether in practice the result would be a cash-grab with no substantive improvement in services.

I am all about public transit. I don’t drive, I don’t ride a bike. So I get around mostly on my own two feet or on the network of buses and skytrains that cross-crosses the city. And I like it, for the most part, cause I get to read and drink coffee on my way to and from work rather than sitting in exhaust fumes. Transit is also one of the few really public, really collective, experiences we have left – a place where a wide diversity of folks from all different communities come together. And while that occasionally has its challenges, more often, I think, it engenders conversation and provides a super-important experience in community.

I would like nothing more than to see an end to the automobile in the city core, at least during regular working hours, and a vast, well-kept transit system. It’s an incredibly important public service, a major infrastructural means to build a coherent city, and quite simply a requirement if we are to continue living in settlements of this size while weaning ourselves off oil. Obviously, then, I also think transit should be completely and universally free of charge.

Where I get frustrated with the transit system, then, is when we see cuts to service and increasing fares, and the transition of our bus networks away from public service and to a private enterprise model . And here’s where I worry about the toll thing. Will this really achieve what it can? Or will it mean simply more costs for us with no real benefits? Would this really, in practice, be about better service and less cars? Or would it end up as simply one more step to the universal marketplace?

Me, I’d like to see this thing given a try, but with a few more specific components:

Tolls, yes, but tolls earmarked for expenditure on a combination of expanded services and decreased fares. These two have to go hand in hand if we are really to make transit an attractive choice for people, and to keep it meaningfully ‘public’.

Rather than a minimal toll all the time, a high toll during working hours and no toll on evenings and weekends when folks are less likely to be driving alone and more likely to be heading somewhere off a major transit route.

Introduce toll-waivers for car and van pools and for folks who can demonstrate that the vehicle is a fundamental requirement of their jobs. Tolls are another form of taxation, yes, but if part of the goal is to get folks out of cars, a global tax ain’t gonna do it cause people will be paying anyway. Target those who drive un-necessarily, and we’ll more likely see the effect we’re looking for.

Something along those lines, I can certainly get behind.

And now, news item two.

Brian Mulroney. Y’know, this guy represented all the very worst when he was in power. His was Canada’s big push to the right as he showed us a Canada that danced hand in hand with Ronald Reagan, cozied up to Margaret Thatcher, sold its sovereignty in the free trade deals and brought neoliberal austerity into every home. Fucker.

But there’s nothing like the Conservatives to make me miss the Tories.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my folks and watching the TV news, and caught a bit of an interview with Mulroney in which he chided Harper et al for entirely failing to protect Canada and fundamentally misunderstanding that Canada is not the US. The line was to the effect that, to be conservative in Canada means to be right of centre fiscally and left of centre culturally, and by failing to see that Harper was doing significant damage not only to his party but to the whole country.

Hmmm. Kinda interesting. But knowing that there’s no love lost between the current PM and the old one, I presumed that much of this was just an excuse for shots at Harper.

But today the paper reports on a big celebration party in Montreal last night – a party to commemorate Mulroney’s election 25 years ago and a chance for conservatives in this country to put on a united front. And Mulroney? Well, the paper doesn’t indicate any public attack on Harper. But what it does cover is really far more interesting. Brian Mulroney, architect of Canada’s neoliberal plan, wades into the US health care debate, with this to say:

“The attacks on President Obama are often bitter and mean-spirited and his approval ratings, his popularity, are sinking like a stone. Still he fights on…Fifty years from today, Americans willrevere the name ‘Obama’. ..He chose the tough responsibilities of national political leaders over the meaningless nostrums of sterile partisanship…”

Huh. How bout that.

Brian Mulroney, you sure as hell fucked this country over, and you bear no small responsibility for the fact that we today have to fight to maintain our own public health care.  Still, I gotta admit it. When I look at our political spectrum today, I kinda miss you and the old Tories.

Community of Books

It is no secret that Meg and I are big on books, and that we try to make it a regular practice to read to one another. In the past, it’s been poems shared, as we take turns picking randomly from the many poetry books on the shelf. Lately, we’ve moved onto fiction, with Meg reading to me from Tess of the D’Urbervilles, something that happened mainly as a result of my near-blindness over the summer and my inability to read for myself.

Anyway, we’ve been reading Tess. And recently, while out with some co-workers, Meg mentioned our little reading-aloud ritual, and noticed that it felt oddly confessional to share this with them – like the sharing of a deep intimacy. Which then led us into a lengthy discussion about the place of reading aloud in relationships, and how quickly commodification can fundamentally transform social practices that have been hundreds if not thousands of years in the making.

Yeah, we’re nerds. We know.

But it is something that I find quite striking, now that I reflect upon it.

As reading of Tess has reminded us, the reading aloud of novels and poems was a major source of entertainment up until very recently, a practice that itself hearkens back to the age-old practice of story-telling around the fire. Human societies have always told stories collectively, publicly, as performance, so that art is a community act, the commonality of our myths arising not only from the fact that we all know them but equally from that fact that we make and share them as a social group. And the public readings and family gatherings to hear stories read aloud lasted far past the development of print media and the rise of literacy, suggesting that even when it became possible to individualize the story, human sociey nonetheless kept a performative, collective practice around this kind of art. So it is incredible that a practice so common up until so recently now seems to us something confessional, something we whisper intimately.

I won’t bother with the legnthy analysis here – mainly cause I’m just not in that mode right now, but do want to get something posted on this damn blog. But occassions like thisthe efficacy of capital to destrpy relationships and create its own simply boggles my mind. I mean, we are only a few generations into the individualized mass media that television provides, and so quickly – in the space of 50 years – that consumer culture has largely displaced long-standing practices and rituals of collective entertainment/ social cohesion – reading aloud being only one of them, but one of the most widespread and commonplace. It’s not unlike the spead with which a big box store or shopping mall can displace a whole neighbourhood and a long history of lccal, community based traders and producers. And, as with that situation, what is lost is not just the practice itself, or the small shops in the case of the other example, but the network of social relationships, the daily interactions among neighbours, the active public life, the community, that our long-standing practices engendered, and which ultimately arise from and help to reproduce all that makes us human.

Have I mentioned yet today that I hate capitalism?

Appreciating, Anticipating

I am writing now, for the first time, with a pair of reading glasses across the bridge of my nose – not the result of the slowly-diminishing eyesight one expects at this age, but surgery on some crazy early cataracts I developed. My eyes generally had worked fine, but as the cataracts grew over , it became increasingly hard to see anything but a white haze. That, thankfully, is gone now, but I am left with an artificial lens which cannot see clearly at close range. Takes some getting used to. But I am certainly glad to have the sight back generally.

Much new in the little world of my own head these days. Have been working like hell to get our basement suite finished so we can have full use of our own home – something that in recent weeks has been weighing ever heavier on my mind as well as Meg’s. But we see an end in sight, and are expecting – or, more to the point, will be insisting on – having that space occupied next week so we can finally get everything organized and make a place that is just ours.

My own anxiety has broken, which is awesome, and I am once again in bliss-land on the home front. So so nice. Woke this morning from a dream I did not remember, but overwhelmingly feeling thankful for Meg. Y’know, all of us find challenges in our relationships – often, if not mostly, not because of the relationships themselves but because of the shit we bring with us – the lingering insecurities and doubts that seem to pop up periodically. And it is easy, when those are active, to become fixated on them and overlook what is real. I certainly feel like I fell into that space for a week or so there. And so today was so glad to wake particularly thankful, and particularly aware of all the adjustments Meg has made in order to be with me.

In particular, I’ve been thinking about child-rearing, because it is the time of year that we need to shuffle agendas, manage schedules, and generally sort out how daily life will look for the next few months. That involves a good deal of negotiation with my ex, and means that for a time I am pretty much entirely consumed by Mica’s schedule, Mica’s plans. And Meg? She is awesome through it all.

I was thinking, as I woke this morning, what a huge adjustment it is to go from single life to not only partnership but to life with a child, and that being with me has meant that Megan be willing to re-make life expectations and life realities to accommodate step-parenthood. So easy for those of us who are parents to forget that what has become simply the norm for us is something profoundly new for our partners. And how important it is to remind ourselves now and then what our past choices mean for those we love, and how much those people must take on. Tension with exes. Regular periods in which we become entirely consumed by something in our kids’ lives, and zone out of relationship-land. Constant feelings of in-between-ness, as parenting-life and partnership-life sit not always-comfortably together, and regularly compete. Tasks and outings disrupted by lessons, homework, birthday parties etc. As parents, we just get used to this, and eventually it comes to simply be what we expect. But for those who take this on in order to be with us, it’s not second-nature but change, and that’s hard. And th fact that someone makes that change for us is pretty fucking incredible, and deserves to be acknowledged and appreciated.

Anyway, Meg is awesome, and she and Mica have both gone above and beyond in their efforts to adjust to a new family and a new living arrangement. And today, for some reason, I am simply very very aware of that, and super thankful for both of them. Today, I am not taking for granted all that they both do to make this work. Today, I am focusing on appreciation.

In other news, it’s back to work, and not as bad as I anticipated. A wedding this weekend for two of the loveliest people I know, which I am super-looking forward to, and a tinge of dread as the event is also likely to involve some requirement to engage with bits of history I don’t especially want to engage with – as is always the case with gatherings such as this. I am song-writing, and reviewing old stories and poems as I consider submitting to the judgement of publishers, inspired by Meg’s recent move in this direction. And getting excited about the year to come, and all that is in store for us – John Prine with my great love, a Motorhead weekend with some of our favourite people, an unexpected but very welcome visit from the much-loved and much-missed Red Chris – and  garden and outdoor space and travel and more.

A rough August, but a pretty damn good September on the horizon, it seems to me. A time of hope and appreciation, with a home that’s all ours, a kid entering her last year of elementary school, and a feeling that the world is full of possibility and potential. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Suite Life

Beat today, but feeling so so good.

Since coming back from the Island on Friday, it’s been a pretty hectic weekend of errands and chores. We have been in this house since April, and since that time, too, an ex of Meg’s has been living with us. We’d promised to build a suite for him in the new place, giving him a place to live at a decent price, and giving us a little extra income and a tenant we know and like, who can help watch the dog and water the garden when we’re out of town. A good little deal on all ends. But the suite construction took substantially longer than any of us anticipated, and the last couple of months it seems that everyone has been kinda ready for it to be done.

We work fine as room-mates, to be sure. But he’d like a place to call his own, we’d like to get he extra room back so we can set up our office and unpack the remaining books, and Mica – well, Mica has been going with the flow, but really could use the settling in that only really happens once the household reaches its stable configuration.

Anyway, after many ups and downs, we finally can see the end in sight, and Meg and I have decided that we will do as much of the remaining work as possible ourselves, so as to try to have the place ready for D as of September 1st. Not much hard work, but lots of little projects that together add up in time and effort – installing shelving and blinds, arranging final plumbling hookup, paint touch-ups, hanging of the final cabinets. That kinda thing.

So, this weekend has involved many trips to pick up supplies, much racing up and down the basement stairs, frustration when things don’t hang just right and elation when they do. Add to that a trip to get all the materials for several large planter boxes and planning of how we will set them up when we reconfigure the backyard, back to school shopping for Mica and the making of a fall school/ classes/ work schedule, and it’s all been pretty busy around here.

But so so good.

Through it all, we’ve had time for a board game or two. We’ve had moments to escape into our upstairs sanctuary for long baths and reading aloud from Tess of the Urburvilles. We’ve had fabulous meals – tonight’s feature a tortellini with prawn and prosciutto in a white wine/ cream sauce made for us by Mica, who is learning to cook one meal per week for the family. And before evening’s end, Meg will have some time with her writerly circle, I will have some hanging out with Mica, and we’ll have a fresh blackberry pie before bed.

Can’t complain. Indeed no.

New Morning

What a difference a few hours can make.

Up late (for me – that being after 8:00), after a long phone call with my girl and an opportunity for us both to unload our stresses and confusions with each other. Mine a pretty generalized anxiety made worse by a bad day of interactions with my ex on parenting issues and fall schedules, Meg’s an often-simmering struggle with the unenviable role of step-mom (read home-breaking whore, in my ex’ estimation) that sometimes spills over when we ht a particularly bump patch in parenting-across-homes.

But a couple of hours to talk and cry and reach out to each other across the phone lines and everything is so so much better. It’s been a couple of days apart, with me in Fanny Bay visiting my folks and Meg in Nanaimo at union meetings – and I am so ready to be back with her again, so ready to get back to our home and our garden. Woke up today with hope and happiness. And so so thankful for this girl in my life.

Altered Ego

A strange day today. OK, let’s just be honest. A shitty day today, and for no reason in particular. I’m out of the city, steps from the ocean, spent yesterday picking blackberries and feeling good. And today, went for an hour-long bike ride down rural roads had an afternoon kayak paddle,  and sat on the beach listening to local musicians sing and play for a few hours this evening. These are not bad things. No, they are good things, and things that normally would save a day for me.

But no. Instead have since morning been stewing, something unsettled in me that is not the depression or anxiety of recent weeks, but something closer to anger.And y’know what? I am getting pretty tired of this emotional turmoil of late. Pretty fucking tired of it indeed.

There’s really no point getting into the details. Because, really, there is absolutely nothing wrong. I’ve done some personal writing and processing of shit, and felt yesterday like I’d made a bit of a breakthrough on that count. And today, something else, but no less of a drag.

However, I am noting something. All this is damn good for the song-writing process, as lines and choruses are coming up one after the other, giving me pages of future material to work with. And noting, in particular, how this particular emotional place lends itself to more country-kinda music – all beer and loathing and whining, that special combination of angry male aggression and alcohol-fueled self-pity that is what defines the genre.

And so, today I am trying to go with it, to let the feelings become darker, take me to places and thoughts that normally would be no-entry zones, and to some extent actively basking in this space because it might be good for some music somewhere down the line.  Of course, that means as well that I only dig myself deeper into the shit. But so be it. Rarely do I get to imagine how good it would feel to punch out a wall, to fantasize about all the ultimatums and demands I would so like to impose on the world, to play not the guy who’ll suck it up and work on his shit but the guy who lashes out at will and feels no remorse in turning his back on the world and simply walking away. And it is kinda refreshing, I admit – even if only momentarily so.

Last year, when Meg and I went to Calgary, we spent a morning shopping, and I came out with a suede hat and a new casual jacket. Meg commented that I looked like the sociologist version of Indiana Jones, which launched us into character development mode. Walking through the park, we devised plans for a little mock blog, an alter-ego sociologist character for me we named Buck Hardy. We set the blog up, and I wrote just a couple of little posts playing with this guy. Didn’t last long, but was kinda fun for a few minutes, and Buck still is on-line here, though he hasn’t done much of anything since those first days.

Well, today I’ve been thinking about Buck and imagining/ wishing I were a little more like him. What would Buck Hardy do with an emotional state like mine? Well, the answer to that one is easy. Buck wouldn’t ever find himself in this situation, cause he is one of those mythical male figures with who feels nothing for anyone and whose great charm and attractiveness comes from the fact that he is made of nothing but booze and sex and cigarettes. Buck doesn’t feel depressed. Buck doesn’t miss people. Buck doesn’t wish he were a little more of this or a little less of that. Nope. Like every cowboy movie star, like the Indiana Jones he loves to hate, Buck Hardy is too busy drinking, fucking, fighting and being brilliant to collapse into the kind of state I’m in lately.

Do I want to be that guy? No. But damn it’s nice to pretend sometimes, Even if all that comes of it is a few lines of some future song.

Miracle Adventure Camping with Anarchists and Grizzly Bears

So, we had planned a week long kayak trip in Desolation sound, and were super-excited about it. For a number of reasons, that ended up needing to be re-thought, and we prepped instead for a few days paddle-camping around Rum and Portland Islands, off Victoria. However, date of departure saw crazy-ass fog, winds and rain, and Meg and I bailed on the trip and the friends who were to guide us – this being our first kayak adventure, and we feeling that we were not up to the challenges of the weather this first time out. Just as well, since be eyesight had so drastically deteriorated by that point that I couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of me in the best of conditions.

(Oh yes, for those unaware – I have discovered I have super-bad cataracts that have been stealing my vision. Went in last week to have one lens removed and replaced with an artificial one, and will have the second eye done sometime this fall. Sight is certanly welcome back into my life, as it’s been incredibly hard living near-blind these past months.)

So, back to it. we ditch the kayak plan, hop in the car and head for the mainland, and decide – what the hell, let’s drie to Manning Park, camp, paddle about the lake in canoes, and spent a day in the interior buying fruit for canning. And so we did, and so I decided in  flash of genius that we should spend this Thanksgiving with as many people as possible camping on Lightning Lake in the cold and dreary fall, and making out Thanksgiving feast on the campfire.

Well, Meg got excited. So far, though, we have not had much in the way of enthusiastic response.

And so, let me toss it out here once again, less because it is going to generate response – indeed I think we are now resigned to the fact this trip will not happen, as we won’t have the 20 or so people we need for a group site – and more just to have somewhere to store this little idea so that we might come back and revisit it again sometime in the future.

Miracle Adventure Camping with Anarchists and Grizzly Bears – a fast-fading dream….

The Event:
Miracle Adventure Camping with Anarchists and Grizzly Bears

The Dates: October 9-12
Thanksgiving, indeed. But a Thanksgiving dinner cooked on open flame at lakeside.

The details:
Carloads of East Van radicals descend upon a group campground at Manning Park on Friday, October 9th. Saturday we canoe, fish, play music, sing songs, hike, drink beer, eat well, and complain about the cold and probable rain.
Sunday we do more of the same, but devote some portion of our day to preparation of a Thanksgiving dinner on Lightning Lake. We eat too much, we drink too much, we laugh loudly and often. We are likely cursed by the children we send to bed and then keep awake with our carryings-on.

The location:
Manning Park, of course, is a short three hour drive – far enough to ditch the city, not so far that it can’t be easily achieved on a Friday after work or with any children who might be coming along.
Lone Duck Campground on Lightning Lake. This is a gorgeous spot, flanked by mountains. Group campsites include a large covered area, several picnic tables, and a woodstove, all of which make it possible to have a big-ass outdoor party even in the middle of October.

The commitment:
If this is going to happen, we need to book a site, and that means we have enough committed participants to make it happen. So, let us know as soon as possible if you are in for sure, or in possibly, or simply not in at all.

Ooooh yeah.

Well, that was the idea anyway.

End of Season

OK, time once again to hit the re-set button.

I am not entirely sure why this blog has been so neglected for so many months. It has been a busy summer, to be sure, but there has also been ample time for writing, so that is no excuse. It has been a reflective summer in many ways – much time spent in thought whether that be personal, political, or whatever, many things to rant about, many things to process. And much writing, too – just none of it here. So, mostly, I suppose, I can only chalk it up to laziness – or at least something that began as laziness and then, as time passed, just seemed too overwhelming to begin again.
But now, here we are nearing the end of the summer, nearing the return to school and work and routine, and I am feeling, at last, ready to start regular posts again.
Most who read this blog also read Megan’s, or at least use it as a cross-reference, so I will send you there for the full summer activities update – the days alone amid old growth and white sand on the magical Flores Island; the cancelled kayak journey which led instead to an impromtu interior run and 85 pounds of fruit to preserve for winter; the gardening/ landscape plans we have made and which are about to begin in earnest and which can be followed on Meg’s new gardening blog – including raised beds, mason bees, a renovated backyard studio, water features, hot tub and perhaps a fig tree; The seemingly constant coming and going from Vancouver; Mica’s trip to Costa Rica, missing her greatly and a few days of quite intense worry about my parenting failures. Yes, it has been full, no question.And more to come this last week of summer, with a wedding to attend, a suite to finish so Darren can have his own space, and already many plans for the fall  – from home projects to heavy metal shows to musical friends and dinner parties.

Can’t really complain, can I?

And more substantively for me? Continuing to write songs regularly which is much fun – some terrible, most mediocre, a few quite good. Tracked down someone on craigslist to bring his guitar over and swap songs every couple of weeks, which has been nice. Have missed playing with Meg, as she’s been focused on garden and writing of late, and not that oriented towards music. Miss her voice with mine, her fiddle picking out a tune over my chords. Missed it alot, in fact. But over the last couple of weeks she’s picked it up again in preparation for a wedding at which she will be playing – so good to have her violin and voice filling the house regularly again.

And some struggles for me lately – not real struggles, but those imaginary emotional ones we face now and then – or I do anyway. Y’know, when something appears as a problem or a failure, and you can’t stop thinking about it. Loss of confidence, disturbing thoughts and visions that can’t be shaken, the sense of failure that follows as one becomes aware that this emotional state is not healthy, that it is spilling over into real life and impacting real relationships. Yeah, that stuff. Much worry, much anxiety, much hurt, and too many days of not sleeping well, of spending the hours I should have been in bed restless instead, tossing and turning or sitting up stewing, crying through the night.

Over now, I hope, the last couple of days finally feeling like I have processed enough to escape the worst and rebuild. Finally feeling I can leave behind two weeks of being my worst, and begin again to be at my best. I am committed to it, in any event.

Yes, that was the summer that was. And this the crappy first catch-up post that is.

Song-Making

For many months I have neglected this blog, despite being chastised regularly by a few friends who check in frequently. So today I have decided to force myself to get back to it.

On my mind today is song. I’ve been on a bit of a song-writing kick lately, the last 6 weeks turning out four or five pieces I am relatively happy with. Just simple little songs, mostly folky and straightforward, but I’m feeling really very pleased with them nonetheless.

Song-writing is a strange thing for me. Generally I’ve written either non-fiction or poetry, neither of which really works for me as music. O, there are are folks that do both brilliantly – Phil Ochs the consumate journalist-bard. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen two fabulous examples of musical poets, and Bruce Cockburn one of the best at combining the two. And for years I tried to replicate their formulae, with the result that the first songs I ever threw together were either straight-ahead political tracts or unintelligible strings of words and images that I decided sounded pretty. I was a whole lot younger then, and today can’t bring myself to sing those things for anyone, cause they just sound juvenile or pretentious or both.

Then, after Mica was born, I wrote alot of little songs for her – just ditties to entertain or amuse, or to distract her from a bruise or impending tantrum. Mica loved them. Her friends loved them. And something felt right for me, as these easy singalong rhymes came more naturally, stuck with me longer, and continued to feel good to me even after a long long time.

So now, back to song-writing after years away, I find I’m writing grown-up songs but more along the lines of how those kids’ songs emerged  – simple, often repetitive little things. Easy to play, easy to sing, easy to understand. And y’know? It’s working like it never has, and I’m actually finding myself willing to play these around other people – something that has never been the case in the past. And as I write and play, I find every day new verses popping into my head, and I rush off to capture them on a scrap of paper for some future development. It’s exciting. It’s a new-again hobby that is reminding me how much I love to sing and play, how good it feels to write, and giving a much-needed boost to me at a time I have been decidedly-disinterested in work and other daily pursuits.

It’s super-nice, this thinking-in-song.