As we started to turn a corner on the global phenomenon known as COVID-19, something began tugging at our collective shirt to try to bring us back around, with some states feeling the pain more than others. The reasons for the spike are varied and nowhere near as simple as much in the agenda driven media would like their viewers to believe. We also can’t forget to mention the (in more than a few cases very violent) protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis, MN policeman. That event (also being simplified by agenda driven media), couple with the artificial economic slowdown in response to the pandemic, has left us in “interesting times.”

I always viewed the phrase, “may you live in interesting times,” not so much a curse but more a blessing. My wonder was why anyone would want to live in boring times. I watched on television as the Berlin Wall came down. I watched in near real time the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. I was in US Air Force basic training when the Belavezha Accords were signed, which officially started the process of dissolving the Soviet Union. I was able to see the first non-white President of the United States get elected, followed by the election to the same office of another man who had never held an elected position in his life. The only overt negative in all this time was September 11, 2001.

While the good outweighs the bad quantitatively, it’s a different story in terms of quality. Not long after my last post (Pandeminomicon), I went into a bit of a funk where I just felt my energy was being sapped from the moment I woke up every morning. It was made even worse when I realized what was happening, but couldn’t pull myself out of it. Things have reversed, and I feel my creative energy has returned. Now I just need an outlet…

While we’re strictly not locked down in Texas, going out is not really an option and I can’t make any new concert work given the resurgence of COVID-19. I’ve been tooling around a little bit in Photoshop, so that’s been a help. I also spent about 2 weeks (most of it waiting for permission to use music) creating some videos of my published images for The Houston Metal Project. That was actually a pretty fun little project as it allowed me a glimpse of where I was at start and now my work has progressed. I need to start the edit for the book, but I can’t get together with my collaborators, who are going to help with the image edit, right now. We could collaborate over the Internet, but for this project I need to have discussions in real time, when the ideas are fresh and can be better fleshed out.

I did come up with an idea recently that I think could be beneficial, however. I’m happy to announce that I will soon be posting interviews. The first one is being worked right now as my subject and I take the time to communicate via text message. I don’t want to do email interviews as there is no room for the conversations that make interviews interesting.

At this point I’m going to face the coming day. The link below is to the first of the videos I created as described above. If you like it, please hit the Like button and leave a comment. I’ll be seeing you again soon, my faithful and not-so-faithful readers. Until then, stay safe.