Drunken Owls and Other Delights

*checks calendar* The Ides of June, I see. Coming close to the halfway point of 2014. And what have I been doing all this time?

Quite a bit, it seems. If I can't for the life of me remember what the date is unless I look at a calendar or my watch, that's a good sign that I've been keeping myself way too busy. Two weeks of double-duty at work (not in hours, but in responsibility--one of my coworkers was on vacation), writing nightly, including a 1300-word article for someone that was due today, and having consecutive weekends packed with events, plus meeting up with the in-laws midweek, and I tend to lose track of time, in a good way.

Our ninth wedding anniversary is arriving fast, and yes, I have in fact ordered my present for her. It states that it should get here with much time to spare, but in typical Jonc fashion, I would not be the least bit surprised if it's delayed for one reason or another. At least I know it won't be a repeat of the typewriter debacle! What other events...let's see...we'll have the symphony next Saturday and the opera the Friday after that (both via discounted tickets!). Past that, July is quiet, with only a show at the end of it. August is the big one, with our trip to London for WorldCon.

Speaking of which, I need to make a personal list of song lyrics that I can take pictures of. For example, taking a picture of a subway entrance on an overcast day ("I emerged in London rain" from Berlin's "The Metro"). Because I'm a dork, that's why.

Walk in Silence is picking up, slowly but surely. The opening of Chapter 1 definitely drags, but I'll edit that later. The point here is to move ever forward. The word count has been surprisingly high, closer to 700 or so words a night, as I'm just letting it bleed out rather than trying to be a word economist. Like I said--I'll edit and revise later. Do I have a deadline for this one? Not entirely, but I'd like to get through it as quickly as I can. I'm also itching to get some fiction work done as well, letting my brain percolate a few ideas here and there. We'll see.

It's also been nearly six months since I sent A Division of Souls out to Angry Robot's submission opening, and I'm curious as to where it stands. I definitely understand they were hit with a giant amount of submissions (around 500 per their website) and they're still slogging through them all. With this being one of the smaller but still significant publishers, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and let them be. I've got patience.

I still haven't jumped on the WordPress blogs...but I'm hoping to sneak in some time this week to have them updated by next weekend. Goddess willing and hoping that nothing explodes at work (*knock on wood*), I should be able to sneak in some time for a bit of creative blogging.


Other than that, it's been quite the lovely and restive weekend, and I'm sad to see it go by so quickly. Hope everyone else's weekend has been spiffy!

As you may have noticed on my WordPress site, I haven't quite gotten around to posting the next Blogging the Beatles post, though I should hopefully get one up by next weekend. It just so happens that I finished up the major revision of A Division of Souls a bit earlier than expected, and all my creative time has been dedicated to getting the manuscript all nice and tidy for submission. Given that I've been working on this novel nigh on a decade (granted, there were a few years in there where I was working on something else and letting this one stew), I believe it's high time I get this one out and away, and I'd like to make sure I'm doing it right this time. So yeah...that novel takes precedence.

Still, I should have gone on that site and posted a "more posts coming soon" filler much sooner. Sorry about that.

On the plus side, I've been doing pretty good with making sure I find time for my other creative outlets. I've posted a couple of new poems over at the Dreamwidth site that are crossposting here (which btw, I don't think I've ever had someone *squee* at my poetry before, so thanks anagramofbrat!) and making sure I get at least something new done each day. It helps that I put my poetry notebook, my journal and my Wacom under my monitor shelf as a way to remind myself to pick them up now and again. Feels good to do that again.

In the meantime, I've been listening to a lot of college radio again. I know..."When are you not listening to that stuff?" Heh. Well, considering that a lot of my desk listening has been either the now-sadly-departed AOL Spinner or my mp3 collection (and occasionally Save Alternative or Radio BDC), I figured it was high time to start branching out again. This time out I've been listening to a lot of KSCU out of Santa Clara University, their playlist is definitely up my alley--lots of indie rock, indietronica, and alt-folk, with a smidge of electronica thrown in there. Just the right level of indie that's not too outsider (like KALX in Berkeley), or trying too hard to cover every single possible music genre (which is another post entirely). In a very eerie way, its playlist is quite similar to WAMH's playlist back in the day--a good mixture of sort-of-well-known alternative, local, and obscure. This is definitely a station for listening. That is, it feels like a station for people like me, who are listeners and not necessarily partiers or hipsters. Well--I could go on about this, but I'm thinking I may have another WiS post in my brain instead. Either way--great station to listen to, well worth checking out.


On that note...Monday beckons and I've got stuff to do these next few days, but hopefully I won't be as scarce as I have been. Hope everyone else has a spiffy week! :)

Okay, I think I may have blanked out on one of those days this past week, as I don't remember it being that quick. I think I might have mentally erased Wednesday or something. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, because work hasn't been all that bad, and I'm making really good headway on the latest run-through of A Division of Souls. It's slow headway, but it's going in the right direction.

Autumn is coming too, and for me, that season means football, college radio, and fourth quarter music releases. The NFL pre-season just started the other week, and the college games will be starting as well. I've been keeping an eye on some of my favorite east coast college radio stations, waiting for them to come back on the air (for those who are seasonal--some are year-round). And of course, I'm always on top of the new music releases, and this coming quarter is chock full of a lot of good stuff coming out that I'm looking forward to. This has been quite a good year for releases, and I'll most likely have a post about that later this weekend.

This sort of ties in with the writing, actually. I've been somewhat lax with the actual writing of Walk in Silence as of late, but not to fear, it hasn't left my head. If anything, I've been letting it brew in my head for the last few months while doing other things, doing some planning and plotting and organizing. So I've decided that, in true school year fashion, I'll be working on WiS on the weekends. This actually makes a bit of sense, considering I've been working a few hours a day on ADoS throughout the week, and the weekend for the most part is wide open for the time being.

There's also the fact that I've been doing a bit of rearranging of the timeline for the book. At first I wanted to write just about the years from 1984 to 1989, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's important to include at least from 1980 to 1983 as well. That would make sense, as I definitely see a trio of mini-eras here: the New Wave/postpunk of 1980-83, the "college music" years of 1984-86, and the slow but insistent entrance into the mainstream of 1987-89. Plus, I also have a handful of people I need or want to contact regarding the histories of the genre. I've definitely been lax on that end.

So! After Emm and I do a bit of walking and shopping today, I'll hole up in Spare Oom, find a college radio station to listen to, and get some writing done.

I think it has to do with the mindset I grew up with...and I'm sure you've all had it. You know, when it's late afternoon or early evening, the sun's already down, it's getting cold, and you have school tomorrow. It's not so much a feeling of dread of having to go to class (or in our case now, work) the next day, as it is a feeling of admitting that the weekend is over.

Living in a city now, at this point in the year I'm always reminded of the years I lived in Boston, going to college at Emerson. Back then, Emerson was situated mostly on Beacon Street in Back Bay (unlike it is now, all at the corner of Boylston and Tremont). For two years I lived at Charlesgate, one of two buildings it used to own at the other end of Back Bay, just outside of Kenmore Square. It was just outside of the downtown area, but still close to everything. Most weekends I stayed in town, hanging out with friends or finishing up homework, but every now and again I would take the commuter train back home.

There were many reasons for these trips back home...visiting family, visiting my then-girlfriend T., scamming some groceries from home, and of course doing laundry for free. I'd head out on late Friday afternoon, sometimes catching the train at North Station, but more often than not catching it at Porter Square. I'd take the Leominster/Fitchburg train out to its terminus (at that point, they still had the coach bus from the Fitchburg stop to Gardner), where one of my parents would pick me up. The ride was often uneventful, and I'd while away the time staring out the window, or if it was dark, writing poetry or in my journal. I'd always have my walkman going, listening to mostly the same things. I pretty much had the same playlist on the way back to Athol: Bob Mould's Workbook, Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine, Wire's 154, and The Cure's Pornography...with random other titles and compilations popping in, but those four seemed to be mainstays. The music often had an undertone of frustration.

Going back home was always kind of strange, because at that time I was trying to distance myself from there at the same time. Though I was trying to get away from the small town and the attitudes that came with it, I still had a caring family and a loving girlfriend that I didn't want to ignore. At the same time, however, I was dealing with conflicting feelings about where I was socially and academically in college, and taking the trip home was a good way to distance myself from that for a few days. It was a strange time for me, but I eventually got through it. And any time spent with T. was a happy time.

When Sunday came, I didn't so much dread going back (though T. and I definitely felt the distance between us) as it felt like I was going back to face whatever it was I left in Boston with a better outlook. It was like I took a weekend off from the city, only to come back to it fresh on Sunday night. My parents (or sometimes one of my siblings) would drive me to the Fitchburg or Leominster stop, and I'd settle in for the long trip back. We'd go in mid-afternoon, so I'd be able to watch most of the trip from my window. I did do a bit of last-minute homework there as well, but mostly I just listened to my music and wrote poetry or in my journal. The music on the way back was different: Morrissey's Viva Hate and Bona Drag, Severed Heads' Rotund for Success, Cocteau Twins' Blue Bell Knoll, and The Cure's Disintegration, and of course more compilations. The mood of the music on the way to Boston was a little more melancholy.

Sometimes I'd get off the train at Porter Square and switch to the Red Line (I still have an affinity for the megalong escalator at that stop...), but more often than not I'd take the train all the way into North Station. Now, North Station looks nothing like it does now, for many reasons (the original Garden torn down and the elevated Green Line gone, for starters), but back in the day there was a feeling of excitement when we pulled in. The sky was black but the Boston skyline was all lit up, and after exiting the station I'd cross the street to the Green line stop and wait for the subway car that would take me back to my dorm. Causeway Street always looked busy, even if it wasn't. There was also the continuous hum of the freeway above, also long gone now. It was that electric hum that I could hear that was missing from my small town that made coming back to Boston something to look forward to.

Even as I took the subway over to either the "Auditorium" stop (now Hynes) or the Kenmore Square stop--depending on how much I had to lug back to the dorm--I looked forward to coming back. Even if my roommate wasn't there at the time, I enjoyed being a part of the dorm atmosphere again, back to being a part of something. This of course clashed with my feeling of retaining any connection to people back in Athol, but I was convinced I could have both.

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I'm always reminded of those Sunday nights near the end of the year, especially now. For one thing, the view I have looking out our living room windows is very similar to the view I had looking out my dorm window down Beacon Street. For another thing, there's still that "end of the weekend" feeling...where I'm in no rush to get things prepared for Monday, and all I have left to do is relax for the rest of the evening. The dorm feeling of course isn't there, at least not to a large extent (our apartment building is sort of like one I'd have stayed in at Emerson, but I don't really know anyone else here), but there are reminders that I'm in a large city and not a small town.

The music isn't as prevalent as it was back then, being that I've been doing more reading during my much shorter commute than listening to music, but it's there if I want it, on my Zune. And right now the sun is just coming up by the time we leave for work, but it's still up by the time I leave, due to my earlier hours. The commute is definitely different and a lot more crowded as well.

However, there's still that feeling of escape on Friday and the inevitable return on Monday, and for me that's what I still find calming about weekends...it's being aware of them and enjoying them while they're there, and not dreading that they're so short.