Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Night Sky Springs A Brief Leak

It rained, sort of. It hit the valley in the evening, but not for very long. Up in the hills at camp, I was despairing that I'd been cheated, but a few desultory drops found their way to the ground during the wee hours, and again within the last hour. Early on, I did get treated to a bit of thunder and lightning. There was a flash beyond the hill to the north, briefly backlighting it, and of course the attendant rumble of thunder.

It's not much, but it's been dry for so long that even a few drops seems like a deluge.

Currently listening to: Bernardo Devlin "Sic Transit"

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Autumnal

As we move into the heart of October, there's a bit of a bite to the night air. Now, as I type these words, I can see a stately procession of tattered, white clouds moving north, starkly contrasting against the deep blue beyond. I love this time of year. I wish it would rain though.

We're slowly but surely pulling the elements of our wedding together. Jeanine and I collaborated on the invitations, and I'm still trying to confirm a band. All of the local bands I've asked are either suddenly not local or have time conflicts (although one band member expressed a desire to play our 10th anniversary). At the moment, I'm pinning my hopes on a friend who has two bands, a swing band and a blues band, and I'm waiting to hear back about the availability of either. They'd be coming from a bit farther away, but hopefully at least one of the bands will be available on the date.

Another friend, who also plays in a blues band, was surprised that we were interested in having a blues band play our wedding, but if you think about it, the whole point of blues is to make people feel good. Of course, most of my favorite music could be labelled "depressing" or at least "melancholy", so what do I know?

I know that the music draws out sadness and expresses it in a way that nothing else can, so the sadder the music, the happier it makes me feel. Not that I'm sad or anything like that, but perhaps the reason I'm rarely sad myself is because I wallow in musical morbidity.

Lest one think that it's just me, Jeanine is fully on board with having a blues band play. Yet another reason why we're such a good match.

Currently listening to: Tinariwen - YouTube mix, which isn't melancholy at all, and thus doesn't really support the point I was making above, but sometimes life is like that.

Friday, October 05, 2012

The Long Fingers of Summer

The week started out uncomfortably warm, with temperatures well into the nineties, but the thermometer has dropped enough so that once again, a jacket is required at night. I've been watching episodes of Dexter at camp while the kids are sleeping, and tonight I plan on watching the last couple of episodes of season 4. After each episode, I take a palate-cleansing walk through camp, watching the stars wheel through the blackness and the fog drift in. It's a peaceful job, as long as nobody is throwing up or bleeding. There have been a lot of bloody noses this week, probably because of the lack of humidity. Kids often seem so fragile, ill-equipped for anything approaching "roughing it".

As I walk around in the dark, I think. This week, I've been thinking about passion, and about how I feel the need to develop some new creative passions, or perhaps revisit dormant ones. I feel like a lot of my creativity has been left by the wayside over the years, although I guess blogging sort of counts as creative, even if it is more like a chronicle of my experiences most of the time. For the time being, I'll take what I can get, I guess. I'm looking for some new muse or inspiration though, perhaps because I just finished reading a novel about a muse of sorts - Christopher Moore's Sacre Bleu. Of course, with this particular muse, pain and loss is inextricably linked to inspiration. I'm not a big fan of pain and loss, even though a lot of great art and music is born from it. Does that make me some sort of psychic vulture, benefiting as I do from the pain and loss of others? Ha.

Currently listening to: Empty Vessel Music "The Burial",