An idea, to start with: the Women’s Resource Center is having a “Walk in Their Shoes” contest, to call attention to abuse; artists are supposed to decorate shoes (either their own, or ones provided by WRC—WRC has decorating materials, too) illustrating the problem in some way, and they’ll go on display at the Bay City Arts Center. The “Walk in Their Shoes” project will be the Artist of the Month exhibit at the Arts Center for October.

I would like to do this. I would want to do it differently, of course. What about a pair of shoes that played music? I do have a song about abuse (actually, I have half of it—the lyrics were written by a lady in The Netherlands, Donna Devine, and I musicated them), and it’d be fun to use this. (Hight “Sometimes She could Scream,” and the link is http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=6833581. I had wanted to show Donna that country music is a good vehicle for discussing social issues—something it’s almost never used for. No, the song isn’t about “abuse” the way it’s conventionally thought of—but that’s probably a good thing, too.)

I have the shoes; I can either use a pair of worn-out sandals of mine (worn out is good), or abandoned teenaged-daughter shoes from the garage. Paint ‘em pink (probably), and run a big, sharp nail up through the sole. The challenge is making the display play music. (The other challenge is making it do so for next to no money.) I know there are programmable e-proms—the little things they put in those musical cards and stuffed animals—but I don’t know where to get them (or what they’d cost), and I haven’t found one yet that would hold four minutes of music. I need to do something else. A cheapo *.mp3 player, perhaps, or a small battery-powered CD player, hooked up to a tiny set of speakers. (If I do that, it’d be better to use girl’s shoes. I can hide the speakers inside.) I’ve got until Sept. 23 to put it together.

And the why? Making people think is a holistic exercise; you can’t (or shouldn’t) just do it with sound. (There are studies that claim we learn best by experiencing something with as many of the senses as possible—sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.) With the Shoe Project, we get to incorporate more of the senses—sight, touch, smell (I bet the shoes from the garage are musty)—plus the music and message hits people from a direction they’re not expecting, and I do like to do that. We are overburdened with data these days, and we retain our sanity by tuning a lot of it out (unless we have ADD, and can’t, and do go a little crazy). I want my stuff to be some of the stuff that is hard to tune out, and I rely partially on unexpectedness to achieve that. It’s the same mindset that insists on exploring human relationships in terms of dead animals.

I needed (and just got) a new acronym—D.I.R.A. (“Do It Right Away”). I let too many things slide, figuring I’ll have time to do them later, and sometimes “later” never comes. I am pretty fast at doing things (when I do them), and I have been pretty good with time-and-motion studies on myself: I can usually gauge pretty accurately how long it will take me to do stuff. I could probably accomplish a lot if I didn’t wait—and now that the busiest part of Concert Season is over, I don’t have an excuse for waiting to do anything. Like the “Husband” song (which I haven’t recorded yet—I’m still not sure it’s “done”) says, “It’s been a real nice ride, but it’s over now.” I will search the garage for shoes. D.I.R.A.

Also D.I.R.A.—musicating Ahna Ortiz’ “airship mechanic” song; I want to have that for her tonight, at the Writers’ Guild meeting. I’d like to point this up as an instance of how we can help each other. Tomorrow? Three more jobs to apply for (only one of them local, alas); setlist for the Rocktoberfest; and I still have a computer hulk upstairs reminding me I haven’t done squat about it, either. I can solicit gigs again, too. I haven’t approached the Neskowin Valley School about the Harvest Festival, their big annual fund-raiser; I used to play that every year. Music this Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

Joe