As promised last week, I've spent some time toiling away, transcribing more of my past collections of poetry, songs, and miscellaneous bits of creativity. There's much more to go, but I've made a few observations.
First, some of what I wrote when I was in high school and college was rather profound. Some of it was utter drivel. I have been making a huge effort not to censor myself as I retype, preferring to keep things as they were in all their naivete and melodrama, but man. It's an effort indeed.
If I could go back in time to my teens-and-twenties self and give myself a few pieces of advice, first and foremost would be that guy is not worth the drama you're putting yourself through. Although in retrospect, my tendency toward melancholy, melodrama and unrequited love did prompt me to write prolifically at times, so perhaps that's not the foremost piece of advice I'd give after all.
OK, truthfully, the most important piece of advice would be don't stop writing. Happy, sad, or apathetic; head-over-heels infatuated, infuriated, or awed... Every little thing that used to make me write at some point stopped being so important to put into words. That, I regret. I got out of the habit of writing, and of sharing that writing with others, and it's a tough thing to get the words flowing again.
So I'm still working at it. Nothing "new" to share at this point, but I've plugged away this week at adding more to my Open the Window, Let in the Rain collection, mostly working from the later end of the table of contents back toward my older, stupider self. I've also put up an index page for what was going to be my second collection of poetry, songs, and creative bits - I started gathering them around 1998 or so, intending to pull them into a cohesive collection and make copies for distribution to friends and family (much as I did with the first one), but I got sidetracked in the process and never finished. How appropriate, for a collection entitled "Unfinished Business."
From that index page you can link to the dedications - I've actually edited that a bit from the printed version I had lying around, and will probably edit some more... as well as the songs index and the poetry index. The poetry index includes links to the more recent poems I've published on the blog, within the original blog posts, so you'll see some explanations, dedications and comments already there from years past. Older poems will be published on individual pages like I've done with the older collection and linked to the titles you see there.
The songs index currently has only two items available to view, and both of those are special requests from my mom: Breathe, and Given. I think I may be missing one or two from that list, which I'll have to go back and add as I find them. While I'm busily paving the road to Hell, I might add that someday I hope to get some help from a good musician or two, record these babies, and add the recorded version for posterity. Perhaps I'll YouTube 'em.
But these are pipe dreams for a different day, and I have promises to keep (I won't forget to work on the new stuff, Dave!), and laundry to do before I sleep. Literally - the bedding is in the washing machine even as we speak!
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