Signs and Portents (The Music Must Change)

State of a real apocalypse of sorts in my life. Nothing bad, mind you. Indeed, I’m counting on it to take me somewhere else, and fast.

That I haven’t posted in over a month is a sign in and of itself. I wish I could say I’ve been busy, but that’s not entirely true. I’m just doing what little I do in a different way.

Like Luna Toonie here, I could keep this going for just so long.

My attitude towards things has evolved over the past few months. I’m no longer content to throw together a photo essay of my cats just to make a post. I’m abandoning plans to write their bios. Whatever this blog is—and I’m still struggling with that—it’s not a cat blog. That much I’ve figured out.

That’s not snow, but hail. The sleet and snow did follow later, with thunder and lightning. April in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Whoop-whoop.

Also, how many photos can we do of the same mountains we see driving US 160 in central San Luis Valley? Or the view hanging out of my second-story dormer window? Views of the unresolved squalor in my just-hanging-in-there small farming town in Real America, USA?

This photo of budding aspens was taken on 20 April. These San Luis Valley specimens are budding nearly two and one-half weeks ahead of the schedule in Colorado Springs, where they don’t begin greening up until towards the end of the first week in May.

I can see me doing a few more of those from time to time. There’s a really nice late afternoon shoot I did of the railroad through town that I’ve been sitting on since last summer.

I’m just not feeling it now.

May I interest you in some food porn? Like these gothic-looking nachos here, of which all I’m allowed to eat now is—everything but the chips! Grains are contraindicated by the keto diet I embarked upon the first of May. Wanna hear about my new diet? Wait, come back, I’m kidding!

I realize this all reads as very depressive. Ironically, these attitudinal shifts are a result of years-long depression cracking against years of resistance. I suppose I could bore everyone to tears with that sordid tale, as if every blue-haired, morbidly obese monster with a Tumblr account didn’t have their own list of self-diagnosed mental and social deformities with which to excuse their laziness, irresponsibility, etc. Alas, the narcissists have ruined it for us more honestly disturbed. No use crying about it. It is what it is.

My adventures with semi-functional alcoholism might be worth a few write-ups. I have some great stories that go against Flaubertian “received wisdom.” When I get around to that, that is. 

A bottle of beer, a glass of wine, a shot of tequila. Yeah, it was getting out of hand.

The upshot of all this is to keep pushing. I’ve ripped vast swathes of my old CD collection for Frank Zappa and old Cocteau Twins to replace the Led Zeppelin and other “dad rock” that have been my musical meat and potatoes for a decade now. I’m rediscovering music that excited me back in the days when music could still excite me.

As much as I’m trying to shock myself further forward, I’m also preserving those old songs I’ve been playing so long that I’ve risked bleeding all the joy out of them. If I still enjoy “Stairway to Heaven” for the masterpiece it’s always been, it’s because I’ve had the sense to cut the radio off when I heard it coming on. The recent Led Zeppelin remasters have been all over my playlist in the last year. Putting them to bed now, I can enjoy the thrill of rediscovery for another day.


Ironically, I’ve had to remove this and all the other Who tracks from my music playlist in keeping with this precise sentiment.


I’ve even forced myself to finish reading some books. Even if they were e-books, I’m at least taking an interest again. This evil spirit called Anhedonia is getting cast out, in the name of...well, I’m working on that too.

Bottom line, tl;dr: I’m still here, still pushing, still figuring it out as I go along. The third book in the SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER is coming out, and the remasters of the first two books are spiffed, shined, and very nearly ready to take their places as evergreen classics for the ages, at least as far as zombie post-apocalypses go. 

I won’t release those until I have the third book ready to go; I might yet change things in the first two books to better connect with what I’m doing with the third.

All right, out of my chair! This is NOT a cat blog!