Strawberries and Cheese

Today started with a pretty painless meeting with one of my attorneys, Chad. I had to get some papers signed and notarized. A woman he shares an office with said that my hat looked like something K-Fed might wear to the beach.

After thanking her for boosting my self-esteem, I hit the road to West Nashville for a session with Bill DeMain. We wrote a song called "Raggedy Man" and recorded four demos for a new album called 1908 Division. I was supposed to do an interview with a blog but the call never came. Bill and I soldiered on, through crackers and cheese and some nice organic strawberries he had picked up at the Farmer's Market.

I am hoping that the songs for this new album are as good as I think they are. It's about my old apartment building; the songs don't have titles, just apartment numbers. The lyrics are Little stories about the people that lived there during my tenure, a surprising number of whom seemed to have since been evicted or just fled of their own volition. I believe that the building is now condemned, but I could be wrong.

I am now back at the house, entering here to warm up for another batch of prose writing. I think I finally have a good idea for a novel. I wrote what I think is a good first chapter last night and I would like to finish a second today. I am trying to heed the sage advice of the one and only Robert Bradley: write first, edit later. This is difficult for me as I am naturally more attuned to style and rhythm than actual content. Many a well-paced manifesto has fallen prey to the basic incongruity of pizazz over substance. But this time I have a good plot that seems to hold up until the very end... which is, of course, fuzzy. I am, however, confident that if I start plugging away at the first 27 chapters the end will reveal itself. I am probably wrong but the exercise seems worth the risk, if you know what I mean.

I am not expecting anything too nuts from the evening. My girlfriend Liz and I are going to make dinner and maybe go for a bike ride. Tomorrow night we are meeting some friends at The Belcourt to see Anvil: The Story of Anvil, which I have heard is really good. I am bacheloring this weekend as Liz is going to New York. I am supposed to go to Franklin with Lindsay for some kind of film festival on Saturday and I think I am working with Liz's father at their farm in White's Creek on Sunday.

Stan was hiding in the bathroom when I came home this afternoon. I am not sure if a thunder storm came through or if he just needed some 'alone' time, but he seems fine now and rather sociable, to boot. He seems to have gained weight this week. But I could be wrong.