I’m ashamed to admit how many times I’ve watched the Australian film, Unfinished Sky, over the last week or ten days. Actually, I suppose I could say that I have nothing to admit because I’ve completely lost track. Is it 4? Or 10? And, if I knew and ‘fessed up, you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. Does the fact that it’s a good movie make any difference? No. Or the fact for some of the showings I was grinding away on the elliptical? Again, no. There are better ways to spend your life.
And then, to add insult to injury, I binge watched the first two-and only- seasons of the BBC series, Home Fires. Basically a WWII soap opera, it features the classic elements of the genre: melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. Yes, I was once more grinding away on the elliptical for a good bit of this treacly orgy. But so what? The show’s still treacle.
One Way Out
So what gives? Well, one thing’s for sure: I wasn’t doing any writing during those many hours that I was parked in front of the tube. And after a while it wears you down. Big time. And the longer it went on, the further I sank. The classic reinforcing loop: once you get into it, there’s the devil to pay to get out of it. Especially for someone like me who has the specter of bipolar disorder perched on my shoulder, always on the lookout for a way to insinuate itself back into the warp and weft of my life.
Back in the ’70’s, I lived in Boulder and got to know a guy named Dave Goodrich. We were both mountaineers-backpackers, back country skiers, rock climbers. But Dave worked in the basement of a music store on the Pearl Street Mall repairing guitars. After all these years, he still has a shop on the mall. But he’s now a well known luthier, repairing fine stringed instruments for musicians of the Colorado Symphony and other orchestras. You really should click on the above link to see some of the beautiful stuff he does.
Once in a while, I used to visit him in his subterranean digs near closing time. He always had the radio tuned to KBCO in the background. The DJ frequently played The Allman Brothers Band classic anthem, One Way Out, at about that time of day. I enjoyed it then. Still do on the rare occasions when I hear snatches of it now.
And the title of that song says a lot. Once I find myself in one of these blog post cul-de-sacs, it often feels like the only way out is the way I got in: start writing. And there’s some truth to that. But, at least in this instance, it’s not the whole truth.
Lifeline
When it comes to this blog, I consider myself the brawn. The brains behind the brawn is a company called Orbit. They take the stuff I’ve written and, with their internet wizardry, get it out to the world. Andy Cleary is the head honcho over at Orbit. In this age of plague, I’ve never even met Andy face to face. True, I think we may have “zoomed” once or twice. But zoom, when you think about it, is a pitiful substitute for being able to shake someone’s hand. Or, even worse, give one of the grandkids a hug.
What made me think that Andy might be my one way out, my lifeline out of this TV induced stupor? Not really sure; see my previous post here for my favorite gag about my palsied memory. But what ever it was, the call I made to Andy finally got the rusted gears turning again. And what, precisely, did we talk about in our nearly hour long conversation? Gwaan! Why would you ask me? Didn’t you read my palsied memory gag?
