Friends,
As promised yesterday here is a video of a song I’m writing.
I’m wrestling over a couple lyrics, but the song is pretty much done. I tend to comb through lyrics pretty closely and make sure every word is doing the right work. On the whole, I feel like the practice has served me pretty well. It’s one of many (good and bad) I picked up while writing and studying poetry and literature during my MFA days at UMASS, Amherst. Make no mistake: I was not very scholarly then, nor have I become so. It took way too much effort to not walk away from my MFA because of a single outstanding three-page paper on Postmodernism in a subject of my choice.
I once knew a guy we called Stoney who as a freshman joined his high school’s big band because the daily in-school practice session took the place of a mandatory silent study hall, and he and his friend figured they could at least goof off at band. Thing is, neither of them could play the trumpet. (He told me they chose trumpets because they were relatively small and easy to carry and conceal when waiting for a bus and a group of meatheads passed by.) They were able to fake that they played because there were a bunch of people who could play their horns. This went on for four years. By the end of his senior year he and his friend were the veterans, aka big-shots of the big band. Underclassmen looked up to them because they were cool. And the band was otherwise really good. So good that they were invited to travel from Massachusetts to Quebec to take part in a giant jamboree. Stoney swore to me that he got to Quebec and noticed he’d forgotten the mouthpiece to his trumpet. Didn’t matter. They placed third or fourth anyway.
I still can’t define Postmodernism.
Thanks a lot for subscribing. Take care of yourselves and those around.
JP
