ONE WEEK left of unemployment benefits, and then it’s all over. I can get a cheap job (if there are any to be had), see if I can squeeze out enough to pay for school… Yes, it’s time to go back to school. After 14 months out of work, I’m pretty unemployable as a city manager. I do have five applications still pending, but I’m not expecting anything out of them. My old job as city planner in Phoenix is being advertised again (after a 14-month hiatus), but they’re requiring a college degree in planning I don’t have, and can’t have for at least two years. I responded anyway (I warned the folks in Phoenix I would do that), and included—just to rub it in—the Official Letter from the vice-mayor (one of the guys who voted to fire me) saying what a great planner I was and what an asset I’d be to just about anybody.

An assistant librarian job to apply for (pays nothing, but it’s at the local library), and the “FAFSA”—that Godawful pages-upon-pages Federal application for student aid that everybody in Creation uses—to fill out, plus still more paperwork for the community college (it appears I can get up to 8 credit hours free if I can convince the right people).

Musically, I’ve started mining Craigslist again for solo gigs in the Portland area. One of the more interesting solicitations came from the city library in West Linn, Oregon, a suburb of Portland; they’ve created a nice performance space for their musicians, and they do pay. Recalling the general level of expertise of a lot of the folks who do gigs like that, I expect I’d have a chance. Being a public agency, one would hope they’d have a less lackadaisical attitude about answering responses than most Craigslist advertisers, but it’s too early to tell. Somebody from the West Linn Library is reportedly coming to the Tillamook Library in a week to hear the music, so that’s an opportunity to impress someone. Maybe.

The “American Blues Blog” people never did respond to my entries (while sending a few e-mails promising they would), but they’ve hired other folks while I’ve been waiting—from New York (two), Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Pittsburgh. The insistence that only big cities matter gets annoying at times. I did run into a book about the blues, full of a lot of theory and tons of juicy quotes and lyrics; it was a science-fiction novel, of all things—The Gutbucket Quest, supposedly by Piers Anthony (but actually written by a friend of his, an out-of-work musician). So now I know a lot more about the blues, but have nowhere to go with it. (There is probably a song in that.)

On the good news front (there is always a good news front—it’s just that sometimes, as the Weather Channel will tell you, those fronts can be kinda weak), I have—finally—a complete first verse to “The Reincarnation Song,” which has been kicking around in the head for over a year. (The title is tentative, of course. An audience will tell me what the title really is.) I don’t know if it’ll be The Best Thing I Ever Wrote; sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re not. It is nice to know I wrote something, and it wasn’t garbage. A lot of writers keep their writing muscles exercised by writing something—anything—every day, and I don’t; for me, it’s got to feel “right”—not necessarily perfect (we’ll take care of that later), but “right.” If it ain’t right, I will deliberately forget it. I don’t have memory cells to waste.

It’s a love song, and that’s one of the things that’s made it hard—I’m not very demonstrative, so love songs are hard. I’ve written only two, I think, in my whole life, not counting the drivel I did as an over-hormoned teenager with a reluctant-to-get-into-bed girlfriend. This one will be bluegrass, of course, since it’s got death in it (one can’t have reincarnation without death, after all).

I also had a chance to do some recorded lead guitar work, on someone else’s blues instrumental (it’s supposed to get words later), and that was fun. It’s excellent practice for the mostly tone-deaf ears—I have to spot chord changes without the luxury of seeing another player’s hands. So I did three leads, two on the Strat (one on the bass strings and one treble) and one on the Electric Banjo. They’re all simple (and if listened to separately, painfully so), but they hang together okay, and are nice against the rhythm piano track the fellow sent. I don’t know what the author will think of them.

Music Friday and Saturday (and a square dance Saturday night). I still want to put new strings on the J-200.

--Joe