
Does holding your breath help the weather at all?
Last week, I mentioned that this week’s forecast was calling for rain Tuesday and Wednesday, with snow a possibility for Thursday or Friday.
By Monday, that had changed to rain starting Monday night, continuing through Wednesday, and we were expecting almost two inches according to Weather Underground. That did not thrill me. The rest of the week looked relatively clear with decent temps, though next week, Valentine’s week, we’re supposed to get another inch of rain at the beginning of the week.
We ended up with almost 2 1/4 inches over two days, but most of that has dried up. There’s a nice gully running down the middle of the driveway though, and that’ll be the last part to get poured, so it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Sigh.
Years ago, like back before we moved into the RV, I heard a recording of someone playing a Native American flute. It may well have been Mary Youngblood, because I now have four of her albums. I worked a booth at the National Flute Association conference in Columbus, maybe around 2008 or 2009, and it may have been at that convention that I heard the recording. I love Mary’s stuff, but since most of my music comes from Pandora these days instead of Media Player, I don’t listen to it as much.
At any rate, I was getting a little hung up on Ghost and came across a post in the 20Books Facebook group that talked about how lo-fi music could help. Over to YouTube I went. One of the tracks apparently screwed up my algorithm there, because a bunch of Native American flute videos popped up in my recommendations. I watched several from Blue Bear Flutes and found quite a few of Mary’s songs there as well.
A while back, I put a Native American flute on my Amazon wish list, choosing one from Butch Hall Flutes. I still haven’t gotten that flute, but the bug is whispering in my ear again, and I may break down and buy one for myself.
It’d be cheaper than a set of bagpipes, which is one of my other favorite instruments.
I seem to have a thing for odd instruments because I’m also a fan of the handpan. I don’t think I could ever play one though because it’s multiphonic, akin to a piano or guitar, and my brain just isn’t wired to play multiple notes at the same time. I’ve tried. Six or seven years of piano. Three or so of guitar. I just can’t quite wrap my mind around the concept. I can harmonize well enough, vocally or on the transverse flute. But I can’t play more than one note of a chord at a time.
Reading
I’m about halfway through Political Seduction of the Church and I’m still having a really difficult time not arguing with Dr. Brown about some of the things he’s saying. I suspect I’m going to have to read it through, then read it again before I start reviewing it.
Dr. Brown is, as I pointed out, unapologetically evangelical, and that colors a lot of his statements. He seems to spend a lot of time in each chapter talking about how wonderful Mr. Trump was as President before criticizing anything evangelicals and conservatives did or are doing. I lost count of the number of times he talked about religious liberty, but the impression I’ve had is that evangelicals and conservatives don’t really mean it when they say they want religious liberty. Maybe it’s more correct to say they only want it for Christians. But I’ll keep going through this. I’ll finish it and review it before I get into the other books I picked up recently. Seduction is a library book but the others I got for free from Amazon, so at least there’s no return deadline on them.
Writing
Last week and this, I’ve been hitting a tough area of Ghost. Keith finally caught up with the bad guy and in his words, “put a face to this murderous bastard.” One of the things Keith can do is enter a living person’s body. He can’t take control of them or possess them, at least not in the typical manner. I think. But what happens is that he’s exposed to all of the living person’s thoughts and memories.
This is, in the case of the bad guy, more than a little unsettling to Keith.
It’s a little unsettling to me, too. Bad Guy is just that—a psychopath. He hunted some of these girls. Women only exist to satisfy him sexually, to do his bidding.
It’s emotionally taxing to write this kind of character, especially when I have to get so emotionally close to him.
Back when I worked at the hotel, I was a big fan of Law & Order: SVU. The hotel lobby had a 60-inch TV on one wall, and USA Network liked to run LO:SVU marathons late at night. I watched 2-3 episodes a night, and I eventually had to stop watching it. In fact, those marathon sessions may have completely burned me out on the series. It’s pretty good writing, and I love the characters. But I found I couldn’t keep watching the sexual violence. I can’t quite put the feelings into words, but I know I didn’t like them. And it’s kind of weird because I could still watch the original series all day long without too much difficulty, as far as I know.
But those feelings I can’t express? I’m running into the same thing with Bad Guy here. These are hard scenes to write. I feel like I’m going to need to cleanse myself when the story is done.
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[…] This week, I’ll talk about what I did for my February 12th post, titled “From Rain to Flutes to Psychopaths: A Week in the Life Of A Writer.” […]