No Commercial Potential...

...and PROUD of it!!!!!

I'm feeling every bit as stubborn as I felt yesterday, and am thinking I may start bringing a book with me to work, as I was doing for awhile last summer, and hanging out at my bench during morning and afternoon breaks. I would rather spend a quiet 10 minutes with William S. Burroughs messing with my head than be a silent audience while People Expound and Pontificate. If I could actually converse and have an even exchange of ideas instead of enduring attempts to convert me to thinking along the same paranoid lines as some of my table mates, then I might reconsider. But the constant one-upmanship and my complete inability to get a single syllable in edgewise is really beginning to get to me.

At lunch, The Expounders so dominated the "conversation," I never made a sound throughout the entire half hour. I ate my sandwich and knitted, and was very thankful I had the knitting, because without it, I might have just started ranting loudly. Knitting keeps me peaceful.

From now on, taking my morning and afternoon breaks with Burroughs or Bukowski will help keep me peaceful, too. Or perhaps I could get back into Milton, now that most of life's crises seem to be past and I could actually concentrate on what I'm reading, and retain some of it. I'd really like to be able to discuss it intelligently when Grant and I have a chance to catch up again.

That performance of "Awake, Arise" I posted yesterday is totally awe-inspiring. Grant was channeling something very powerful, no doubt about it. I need to save the video and convert it to an mp3 so I can put it in my player and listen more closely.

I played guitar for awhile tonight, though I felt pretty brain-dead. I worked on one original, and a whole passel of songs "American Idol" devotees wouldn't recognize in a million years. If I keep practicing as much as I have been, I'll be in good shape to record, if I'm ever alone in the house long enough.

Next up for consideration are, not necessarily in this order: "50" (my own original song), Dancing Barefoot (Patti Smith), I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You (Tom Waits), Hanky Panky Nohow (John Cale), Green Eyes (Grant Hart), and Apeman (The Kinks).

After I've accomplished all that, I have three more originals I need to re-do.

Where will this get me?

Big fat f*cking nowhere, but I don't care. I'm content to make a pleasing noise, and know that I do not sound like I've been homogenized, or had the life pasteurized out of me. Yes, I'm mainly doing cover tunes, but I am doing them my own way. I'm making them mine and owning them, albeit in a small way. And no one is "pulling my strings." (God bless you, Jello Biafra!)

Some anti-TV sentiments:

"We lost our faith and prayed to the TV. Oh, we should've known better." ~Sting~

"And when you're the object of complete derision, I'll make you a star on television." ~T-Bone Burnett

"I'm the tool of the government, have you guessed me yet? I'm the slime oozing out from your TV set." ~Frank Zappa~