Make It New

I've had some messages asking if I was going to end the blog.  In truth. . . yea. . . that is what I was thinking.  I was getting depressed.  I wanted to put all things behind me.  I would start anew, I thought.  So I wrote in the journal, anyway.  

I met an old friend at the Cafe Strange Christmas Festival on Sunday.  The thing was big and weird.  Huge, really, stretching from the parking lot into and down the street, crossing the road and into the little hipster shopping center across from it and into another down the way, booths and tents set up to sell, well. . . hipster junk, I guess, but the crowd was never-ending and as strange as it ever gets.  I was afraid I would miss it as I was getting my hair done at noon on the way across town part of the county where there are Hispanic churches on every corner and lots of used tire shops, little homestyle restaurants, and shade tree car repair places.  But the hair was quick as she hardly cut it and didn't put any bleach in it at all so that I came out looking more beige than blonde, but I will address that later.  

As I drove out, my tenant called and I told her about the festival.  She said she was going to walk up to it.  She called me when I was driving back and I said I would meet her there and give her a ride home.  Of course, she knew many of the freaks.  I got stuck talking to one little smarmy imp who she introduced as "a writer."  Oh, you know, a good one, screenplays, short stories, poems.  Butter wouldn't melt in this bard's mouth.  He was a passive/aggressive little fuck, but fortunately the old friend came up and got me out of the conversation.  

I'd met him when I was living in a big old house next to Country Club College in the '70s.  He was just a kid then, but now, it seems he might be older than I.  At the time, his friend lived in a garage apartment next door and the two of them would come over and sit on the floor and go through my bookshelves looking at the adventure travel stuff.  I was teaching then, and they thought I (but probably more my pretty girlfriend) was groovy.  

He went on to become quite a big part of the "art scene."  His grandmother died and left him some money and he travelled  a fair bit then came back to become a jack of all arts.  He eventually got in with Gotham's burgeoning Art's Council and ran a big two story gallery downtown.  I hadn't seen him more than a couple times in ten years, so we caught up.  He had gotten fired by the city, so now he was writing for a cultural arts publication.  It gave me an idea.  I had many, actually.  He'd be a good resource in finding a studio, I imagined.  There was that, but I was thinking that maybe he could get me in with the rag he was writing for, too.  I was already thinking about moving the blog to Substack or maybe, just maybe, trying to write a story a week, a real story, edited, polished, with a sort of beginning, middle, and end, though maybe not a pat ending, and putting them out "there" as well.  

But I would need to kill the blog, I thought.  As I said, I was getting depressed.  Was it the season?  Who knows?  But there were a lot of things I didn't want to rehash anymore, a lot of things I thought better to be left behind and I was dragging much of it back up with the blog.  It seemed a morbid reminder of days long gone.  

So I repaired to my journal writing and sussed out all the things I needed to do.  But I wasn't.  

The girl working the counter at the Cafe Strange yesterday was one of the two kitchen girls who look like '70s punk rockers.  The boy in line ahead of me knew her from his past.  They were catching up while she put together his order.  

"I hear you are in a band now."

"Yea."

I knew it! 

When I got to the counter, when it was my turn, I said, "I heard you are in a band."

"Yes," she smiled with not a little pride.  

"Is the girl you used to work in the kitchen with in it, too?"

"Yea."

"Every time I saw you two working, I thought that you looked kind of '70s New York punkish.  I always thought I wanted to photograph you in some graffiti alleyway."

"That's a cool looking camera."

She pointed to my Leica which was sitting on the counter.  

"It is.  People always are interested in it."

"What kind is it?"

"It's a Leica.  Someday, I'll make photos of your girl band."

"Sure," she beamed.  No. . . I'm not just saying that.  But my balls were shriveled and just then when I should have asked to take her picture and do all the things I needed to have done if I wanted to shoot her and her punky girlfriend, I didn't.  I just took my latte and went to a table like some castrato simp.  

So I wrote in my journal.  How in the fuck was I going to. . . whatever.  

What am I going to do when I hear a song, though, that I think makes me hip for hearing?  I want to show it off.  And then there is Syria and Biden and Trump and the weirdness of the world, and I don't know what to do.  

So maybe. . . I won't quit the blog.  I don't know.  I'm like everybody else, of course, like the fellow who got fired from his city arts job, like the girl behind the counter who is proud to be a music "star," like all of you who want some recognition for being. . . something.  But I don't even know if this is being read or if it is a just static in the cosmos.  

If I continue, I'm leaving shit behind.  If I'm going to post, I've got to "make it new."  

I don't know if I can.  We'll see.  

But. . . there are some things I just can't leave behind.  

Like groovy music.  Here are some of Tennessee's kin, Melungeons, I believe.  C.C. says he has some blood, too.  But holy smokes, man, I love me some good mountain music.