Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Anxiety & the Antidote

Woke up this morning from a dream: 


in a big city, somewhat unfamiliar, suddenly aware that I was supposed to play a gig in Aztec, New Mexico in 30 minutes. My saxophone was home, missing a pad, and with no reeds. I finally found a music store, small in the front, expanding inside to include Ken Sanders and his rare book shop. When I finally found a tenor sax reed I started sucking on it and looked for another. There was none to be found. I went to the back and asked Ken. He took me to a side wall where there were little cabinets and pulled out a very dark reed with what looked like a little soul patch. I thought it was weird and beautiful. I took both reeds up to the counter. The woman behind it pointed out that the first reed required a special mouthpiece, which I didn't have. I left with only the other reed, already late for the gig. Alex Caldiero was outside waiting for me. He was late for the same gig. We set off . . .


Anxious, I think, about the things I want to do this summer —Zarko's and my books, Sam's and my book, the barbed wire book, Immortal For Quite Some Time — obviously too much and too little time.


If I had remembered, instead, in my sleep, these vistas from last night, I might not have worried so much.









3 comments:

* said...

i'm sure it will go fine. you're doing also these books not alone so will all sort out. which one is the first to be ready?

Scott Abbott said...

i would have said the same thing (thanks, by the way), but the dream reveals i'm not as clear on the outcomes as i thought i was.

should hear something this week about Zarko's and my books (whether the publisher wants to see the whole manuscripts, which are ready).

sam's and my book Wildrides, Wildflowers is being read right now by a publisher.

barbed wire is growing steadily but over a year from being done.

immortal for quite some time needs a good, careful final editing before i send it off.

on standing is growing nicely -- i'll put up something about knausgaard's angel book in the next day or two. its ending caught me by brutal surprise; but he's using the metaphor as i suspected.

with all of those underway, something! ought to bear fruit.

* said...

see it all comes together nicely, in time. and all in a different state of progress.

knausgaard ending didn't surprise me, a lot of it is in the struggle books too, as if by repetition having to write about the same things all the time... although the struggle-books are later than the angel one...