Monster problems

I did practice guitar some today in preparation for Tuesday night. I tweaked my amp sounds to get the Megadeth metal sound down a little better. I also started on the critique that I owe the Stories for All Seasons person; I should be able to finish that tomorrow or Tuesday at lunch and get it to her.

I also discovered that I’m having jack trouble on my Strat. 🙁 I first noticed it Friday night, and thought it was a cord problem. But after trying multiple cords, the problem remains. The only cord I have that doesn’t short out or crackle in the jack is my Monster guitar cord. I haven’t figured out why it is that the Monster cable works well and the standard cables don’t, but it must relate to how they sit differently in the jack. I hope the Monster cable hasn’t spread the jack in some way, making other cables fit incorrectly.

Good Days

Last night’s writing group was excellent. Only two people showed up, which was monetarily unfortunate for Melanie, but very fortunate for Michael and me. We discussed a short-short that Michael had written, the responsibilities of an artist in recording true-life events, and they both offered wonderful feedback on my “Saint and Cynic” story. After incorporating some of those suggestions, I’m going to cut this one off and start circulating it.

Melanie also wondered if I had done anything with my “Fear Sphere” stories since the last one. I haven’t, other than thinking about them. She encouraged me to write more of them and collect them together. I hope I can get some of these projects rolling when Ryan moves out. Having that spare room for working in the early morning will be a blessing, as long as I take advantage of it.

Tonight, John, Brad and I donned our collective instruments to become Flat Rabbit, and we had a very good night. We covered a lot of material and added a few songs to the list. We played “Sweet Child o’ Mine” better than we ever have, I think, and even went over a bunch of old originals that Brad and John wrote years ago. All in all, it was a fun night, and I was reluctant to break down my equipment.

I did have one problem, though. My Strat started squealing, and I traced it down to what seems to be a jack problem. I took the jack plate off to check the insides but it seemed fine, with no loose wires. It worries me a bit, since I will be trying out for Better Than Nothing on Tuesday night. Later in the night, the Strat played fine, so I may have put off the problem for a little while, but I need to recreate it at home and figure out what’s wrong.

Tem Group

The Tem writing group meets tonight. For the second meeting in a row, I won’t have my homework done. My excuse is that this week has been very busy; I have something going every day this week, both at lunch and in the evening, so I haven’t had time to do the assignment. That’s what I get for waiting until the last moment, rather than completing the assignment last week, when I had time.

I will be receiving some critiques on my short story “The Saint and the Cynic” tonight, and I’m looking forward to that. I got a surprise critique on it last night from one of the people at Stories for All Seasons, and she had some valid points and a couple of good ideas about different directions I could take the story. (I owe her a critique, too. I had forgotten about that until she mentioned mine, and I kind of feel like a heel about that.)

An Opportunity

I will be having lunch my friend Michael today, on his gracious invitation. We will be discussing writing in general and whatever else comes up. Tonight, I will be attending Stories for All Seasons. Earlier today, I updated the Stories for All Seasons web page with upcoming appearances. It looks like they are fairly booked through February 2003, with some very big names appearing. That’s great to see.

(Later that day)

Lunch with Michael was good, and we had some Real discussion about artistic inspiration and responsibility. We also briefly discussed recurring themes in our work, which gave me a lot to chew on.

Late in the day, I got an e-mail from John, the bassist for Flat Rabbit. Evidently his other band is in need of a guitarist, and I’m going to try out for the spot. If I do manage to land the spot, it will mean looking closely at my available time and deciding which creative activities I want to pursue most.

Fatima

I plan to write a poem at lunch about the death of the little girl on I-25 yesterday. It won’t be about the death directly, but about the sadness of the loss. I’ve thought about writing a series of poems exploring perspectives, and this might be the first.

(Later that day)

Instead of writing the poem, I struggled with the moral question of whether it is right for me to use this incident for inspiration. I’ve done something like this before, in the poem “It Could Have Been a Masterpiece,” about the death of one of my college friends, but that was a grown person, not a three-year old child. The child’s name has been released to the press — Fatima Guadalupe-Guerrero — and I would like to dedicate the poem to her memory. But am I being too invasive by doing so? Is there something fundamentally wrong with using the death of a child to make an observation about the different perspectives of society? If I write this poem, am I reducing her death to a supporting point for an argument, or am I elevating it to something more than just a dreadfully unfortunate accident?