Saturday, October 13, 2012

Old Ground and New

Saturday, October 15, 2012—Long Beach, CA

A warm, mild day, high 70s, a touch of breeze. A nice change after the cold little storm that moved in a couple days ago. It’s supposed to be back up into the high 80s (at least) by the beginning of next week. I’m not looking forward to that, though I prefer those temperatures to having to ride my scooter thru the icy rain, like I had to do on Thursday. Like most Southern Californians I’m never quite happy unless the weather is perfect, which I define as being about between 72-74 degrees with a slight cooling breeze and just enough humidity so one’s sinuses don’t dry out. A lot of people agree with me on this, I assume, based on the facts that we often come at least close to this weather nirvana and that so many people live here.

Feeling scattered lately, (which might be why I haven’t written here in quite a while). I’ve been busy in all the wrong ways and I’ve been feeling very confused as to what should be my next move, in regards to a lot of things—in other words I’m feeling pretty much as I felt for the last year or so at least. I do know that I want to shake up my life. I’m still not sure how I should do this, though. Get an English masters? Move to Greece, their economic collapse be damned? Stay here and just find some other job than teaching? Throw myself hard into publishing and see what happens there? Probably connected to all this is that I’ve been feeling alternately old and that I’m still relatively young, that I still have so many good years ahead of me. I think this means I’m simply at the end of something—I am old in regards to what I’m doing, but I will be reborn once I figure out what’s next. An hopeful, downright enchanting, thought, (which makes me distrust it—we fear decline and death so much that our minds can conjure up all sorts of improbabilities to avoid facing these inevitabilities). Despite my misgivings I’m inclined to think I’m right on this one. I swear I see flashing lights one the horizon, and I’m can’t shake the feeling that they have something to do with me.

On a more down-to-earth note, a lot of my problems I'm seeing more clearly than ever stem from my teaching anthropology: I’m bored to death of it. Because of this, I don’t think I’m doing a particularly good job of it lately, which makes me feel less than thrilled with myself (especially as I know that I’ve got it easy, that the world is filled with people who do things like mining coal, working in slaughter houses, and hauling garbage who’d kill to have as cushy a life as mine). Figuring out how to make enough money to survive, while still having time to write, and not teaching anthropology is the key for me. This is why I’m again thinking seriously about going back to school and getting an English lit masters. I still like teaching, I think—I’m just teaching in the wrong field. (Damn it! I’ve been writing about this kind of stuff for many months—make a change, Rob, do something!)

There’s been little time for much beyond teaching and keeping the basics of my personal life together. But I have been discovering some new music, lots of stuff British acid-folk and related music from the sixties and early seventies I’ve either never heard and had before only explored lightly. So far my favorite of these discovers are the band called Trees, which released two amazing albums before disbanding. They'd fall into the same broad category as Fairport Convention, though with a harder edge. They’re also more consistent songwriters than the former. The best Fairport songs are better than the best Trees songs, but Liege and Lief is the only Fairport album that stands up as a whole to the Trees albums. I’ve also been listening a lot to a far more obscure band from England called Dando Shaft. Their first album is one of the most brilliant and original folk recordings I’ve ever heard—swirling mandolins, wild tunes that both drive and waft at the same time, that are both whimsical and serious, traditional yet totally original. Strange good fun.

Haven’t been able to read much. I keep starting books and then putting them down. Part of this is because my time is too limited to take on books that demand a great of concentration over a long period—I simply lose track of and then interest in such work. There’s also a been-there-done-that feeling that comes over me when I read many books these days—I feel like I’ve figured out the book long before its end, which of course makes going further a drag. This really bothers me because it connects perfectly with how I’m feeling about many aspects of existence. There’s a repeat quality to so much of what I do these days, so much of what passes thru my world—little surprises or thrills me anymore. This obviously ties into what I was discussing earlier and it scared me. For example, I’ve been trying to read Dangerous Liaisons, by Choderlos De Laclos, a classic 18th-century French novel, a majoy classic. It’s a great book—I recognized this in the first few pages. It snaps, sizzles, while deftly diving head first into the human condition—and I got it after about fifty pages—I didn’t feel the need to read anymore, I knew more or less what would happen, what would have to happen. This is definitely my problem, not the book’s, not life’s (so to speak). Again what (if anything) can I do about it? What will make me enjoy experience again? Where is my God damn sense of wonder? (but then again, like I just said, I have been really enjoying some of my musical discoveries—this bodes well for me having a future). Oh well, fuck it. I have been reading and enjoying White Bicycles, by Joe Boyd, a record producer and manager, who worked with a lot of artists I adore, including many in the acid folk world I’ve been exploring. It’s a very well-done memoir of his life in music and I’ve been having trouble putting it down (see my previous parenthetical statement, as it applies here too). So there are some literary places for me to go, to be …


I almost forgot—Edgewater has come out! Or perhaps leaked out is a better term: it’s on the BSP site but not yet available anywhere else. I have little hope that it will sell much (most people would rather have their toenails pulled out than read poetry), but it’s nice to have those poems all in one place. It turned out well too. The cover painting looks great, like its painted right onto the white cover. I’m also happy because it’s simply a good book. I’m so tired of the Bukowskiesque publish-everything-you-got-and-see-what-sticks philosophy—that just sets up a situation where a lot of 2nd and 3rd-rate crap gets put out. I was brutal with my editing, as evidenced by the fact that though the book is subtitled Poems 1992-2009 it’s only seventy-five pages long. I wanted only the best of my poems, the stuff that might have a chance to outlive me. I think I got that: I may never write a better book. Again, I doubt it will sell, but I’m satisfied, and with poetry that’s about all one can hope for …

2 comments:

Josh Mahler said...

Hey Rob, I just picked up your Heaping Stones and Edgewater pack. I look forward to reading both. Good luck...

Rob Woodard said...

Cool! I hope you enjoy them. Let me know what you think.