COUNTDOWN (AND VIDEO THOUGHTS)...

Is writing things down an excuse for doing them? Sometimes I think so (like now). Lots of things to do before the Road Trip: get haircut, shine shoes, assemble books (I will visit one of my favorite bookstores while in Medford), pack (I’ll do it early, so I have plenty of time to worry about what I’m forgetting), get the van tuned up, apply for more jobs.

I ran across an article about some city-manager jobs in Midwestern states going vacant for over a year, because nobody’s applying (the economy is rottener in some places than here, apparently). I found a town in northern Minnesota that looked attractive, and I’ll offer them me and see what happens. The worst they can say is no (and that’s what everyone else is saying, so it ought to be familiar by now). Might do it a few times, even—all it takes is paper, printer ink, and stamps, and I have all those.

A few projects to get done during Countdown Period, too. I have the Garibaldi Days program to design and typeset (a big job, and completely unpaid, but important for re-establishing my reputation as a graphic designer), and a video to do for Lorelei Loveridge, the Canadian-British songwriter who’s reincarnated Performing Songwriter magazine as an online (and interactive) “club” on Facebook. 100 seconds, in which I have to both tell about myself and offer some perspective on the state (and future) of the music industry.

Doable? Of course—I love new projects. I’ll do it like I did “The 30-Second Resume,” with a soundtrack, slide show, and printed comments flashing on screen as the photos go by. 100 seconds is too short to use any existing song, so I’ll have to write one to fit; it probably can’t be any more than two verses. I can play around with speed and musical padding to make it fit. Probably a two-step, since I write country music. The phrase that keeps recurring when I think about it (and which I’d like to use somehow) is:

I’ve learned to lie, and cheat, and sin,
Signed up for Hell and can’t get in—
Another lonely singer at the gates of Babylon.

I think of the slide show tactic as “French video,” since I’ve seen it used most effectively on YouTube by French kids; I don’t know if it’s because they don’t have the technology available, but that’s certainly my problem—the technology exists, but I can’t afford it. However, I have always been good at getting maximum mileage out of what I have, and I have picked up some tricks from watching those French kids’ “videos.” The ability to run printed comments at the same time the other stuff is going on—and to control the timing separately—is a Godsend for me, because I always have too much to say. I can put some of it there. If I have three things (which don’t have to be exactly related) going on at the same time, the “video” becomes not-boring.

Also on the “getting maximum mileage out of what I have” front, I’ll record the musicians at the Tillamook Library performing the latest song, the one I wrote for Sara the librarian about her house fire. Tentatively titled “Me and Rufus, and Burnin’ Down the House.” (Rufus is her English bulldog, who was with her when the fire happened—they’re inseparable.) I can do (sorta) the trick John did when he recorded the band—set one instrument mike (one is all the Tascam can handle without help) out in the audience, trained roughly on my guitar but able to pick up everything in the room that’s amplified, and dump it to 2 tracks on the Tascam.

I played the song for the Friday Night Group, with Sara there, and she (and they) liked it. (Sara probably laughed more than everyone else.) So now they’re familiar (sort of) with it, and hopefully can follow. (Rufus, for his part, didn’t hear the song. He was asleep.)

Joe