No, this isn’t a review of Counting Crows 1999 masterpiece of an album. Although, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, you could do a lot worse in terms of listening material from the late 90’s and I’d argue it’s their best work by far in terms of songwriting and musicianship. The reason why you might be unfamiliar with this particular gem? 1999 was also the year we got Californication from Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Battle of Los Angeles from Rage Against the Machine, Enema of the State from Blink-182, …Baby One More Time from Britney Spears, There Is Nothing Left To Lose from Foo Fighters, Play from Moby, Significant Other from Limp Bizkit, Astro Lounge from Smashmouth, Supernatural from Santana, and many others.
While some of those albums are extremely suspect looking back now, we all know that several of them were in our Body Glove CD wallets on the passenger seat of some car back in the day.
And yes, this entire intro was an excuse for those of us of a certain age to feel really, really old.
The desert in my life currently is one of poetry – specifically, the urge/inspiration to write any. It’s a strange thing to be posting poems for the last couple Word Wednesdays while not actually writing any new poetry. Feels like a bit of a shuck, if you want the truth – like I’ve been pulling one over on you, dear reader. Well, in some respects I’m sorry and in others, I’m really not.
I’ve always had this idea of being extremely creative out at the extreme ends of my emotional spectrum. It always seemed to be where the juiciest bits would float to the top and find their way into my work. I mean, it seems like a poetic sort of thing doesn’t it? Writing out on the ragged edge? Suffering and bleeding for the art?
Trouble is, that’s not always the case. With the help of hindsight and a file saving structure that shows me when things were actually written, I can now see quite clearly that a lot of that stuff… isn’t terribly good. It was very therapeutic at the time and probably helped keep me sane for a couple more days, but it’s not always the best poetry and usually not something I’d be willing to let anyone else read.
Turns out that, for me at least, I get very whiny out there on the ragged edge. And if I go further than that? It’s pretty much shutdown. Which is where I’m at now. Turns out a worldwide pandemic induces a whole lot of stress. Who woulda thunk it, right?!
However, that doesn’t mean I’m running up the white flag. My plan now is to get a little mental WD-40 into the mechanism and see if I can’t get the gears working again. I’m not sure exactly how that’ll work (and am open to suggestions in the comments), but it’s better than sitting here gathering rust.