Today marks the second anniversary of Why It Matters. Last year was a busy one. Here’s what happened, and also what’s coming up:
Tag Archives: Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren and Ethel Workshop, 11/3/2012
My boy suffered his first loss recently, a friend who simply didn’t wake up one morning. That’s the way to do it, but not a week shy of your sixteenth birthday.
27. I’ve Been Trying to Get a Message Through the Air to You
6:00 p.m. Tower Cafe, The Police on the headphones. That’s a bit contrived, though. This whole set up is, beginning with that notation. I have made the same notation on every journal entry for the last twenty years. Every Tuesday evening I come here, sit alone with notebook, sketchbook, book book, and either draft what I’ve been noodling about or polish previous noodles. I drink the same thing and if I’m lucky I sit at the same table, but you’ve heard this story before.
The routine works for me, and that’s all that matters. The locus of writing is simply doing the work, but the magic is in the voodoo ritual — whatever secret combination of factors that calms my panic long enough to allow pen to meet paper. I worry, though. Playing with routine and ritual is for me a bit like a junkie playing with heroin. Since at least my early twenties I’ve dealt with — or more appropriately haven’t dealt with – obsessive compulsive disorder. I wasn’t aware of this until a few months ago, though the few friends I’ve told have greeted the news with a “duh” and a laugh, so apparently I’m the last one to the party. They seem to think its funny — that OCD is some quirky personality trait. It’s more like chassis rust on your ’65 Mustang: You’re not likely to notice it until you snap in two while speeding down the highway.
21. Who Are You?
Money was tight for twelve-year-old me: allowance, what I could get mowing lawns, that’s about it. Used record stores didn’t exist, at least not in Spartanburg, and new records were expensive. Enter the cutout bin.
