"I'm gonna thank the Lord above/ for my trillion selling platinum hit/ I'm gonna write me a book and call it/ How You Make Gold Outta Shit."  "Change My Name," -the Beaumonts, from, Hey Y'all, It's the Beaumonts. Saustex Records

Now may mark the time when those out there puzzle at my state of mind in regards to that young woman I can go on on about on this blog.  Yeah, in my opinion, she handed me a shit deal.  In my opinion, she came from a place of aggression and hate.  In my opinion, she acted on behalf of someone from my past who wanted to exact some kind of revenge.  When I approached that young woman at her old place of employment for social reasons back in October of 2021, people out there, in my opinion, got  an idea of the real place this desire for revenge came from.

Suppose I could magically make gold out of such a shit deal?  Well, I guess that would let this young woman off the hook.  She would never have to own up to the place she came from with whatever attentions she did pay me.  She would never have to rat out anyone.  She could pretty much just get away with murder in that regard.  I can see why such a course of action on my part, making gold out of shit, would appeal to a lot of attractive young women out there, and how I'm some kind of asshole for "refusing" to do so.

Brett DePalma, in offhandedly lecturing on how the art world exploits too-hungry-yet-vulnerable artists; Brett stood there, playing the role of an art world scenester, and demurely clapped and said, "Ooh, that was very good.  Do that again!  A little more blood this time," as he clinched his fist for emphasis.  I see any attempt to match or exceed my effort to reach out to this young woman from this point forward as an attempt to, "Do that again."  If the Richy Vegas myth contains any truth, my real employer, the employer I truly do such things on behalf of,  knows better than to make such demands of me.  He ought to know why.

I will go over some ground I've gone over before, because it bears repeating.  At fifteen years old I fixated on a girl in my high school.  Looking back, I realized at the time that, given the extreme attraction I had towards her, that no way on Earth existed for her to have a mutual attraction to me of anywhere near the same intensity.  That thought alone became enough to send me into a tailspin of depression and despair.  I never even tried to approach her for a movie date or anything like that.

In college, at the age of nineteen, I fell hard for a girl in my art class.  She was twenty-three, very nice, but she had a serious boyfriend.  The fact that I couldn't even approach her for social reasons because of this fact sent me to the depths of despair.  I decided I would try to resolve my dilemma by asking her out anyway.  She said, "My boyfriend wouldn't like it," and I made some quip in reply, but that still bummed me out.

This last person I'm finally getting over, I think, came after me in an adversarial manner, to the best of my knowledge.  She'd worked at that business for a good year and a half before she started in on me.  I did not get all hung up on her until she came after me locked and loaded for bear.  

For these past eight years, ever since that virgin girl started in on me, I've had to deal with an issue of romantic fixation towards women who all seemed to want to get some mankiller reputation off of me.  That's the bad news.  The good new is, a young woman simply being very attractive but not interested or available doesn't send me into a tailspin anymore.  It takes SO MUCH MORE for me to get all hung up on this or that attractive young woman.  I think I managed to neutralize this last one's aggression emphatically enough that no young hotties in my purview are going to want to try that with me anytime soon.  I hope not.

I attended a day long show at the Sagebrush last night.  A lot of attractive women smiled at me and whatnot.  Last night I came away from attending that show with the impression that some incidental people in my world still wanted me to pursue that young woman I can go on and on about on this blog.  I don't think she works at that business she used to, though.  I've patronized another business that sells different stuff than her old job, and had a couple of sightings that could, or could not, have been her, but I'm not sure.

I had the thought last night that I did not really KNOW that incidental people in my world actually wanted me to pursue this young woman.  A more realistic view might hold that such thoughts I have signify attempts by me to project this idea onto these interactions and comments from these people, by taking what they say or do out of context and applying it to my situation, such as it still exists, with this young woman.

I decided that I don't want to patronize this one business where I thought I possibly spotted this young woman a couple of times.  I only go there a couple of times a month, and like I said, I don't know that I really saw HER, but it means a lot to me personally to impose this kind of restriction on myself, so I will do that.  I remember back in 2012 I decided to stop wearing a t-shirt into a diner where I used to eat breakfast, because I had the notion that a certain waitress took offense to it.  I didn't tell her that I stopped wearing this shirt, but I figured it meant a enough to ME to refrain from doing so.  It took about two and half years before the women there snapped to my gesture, by which time I had to do kind of pitched psychic battle with this particular waitress and other employees at this diner.  Talk about delayed gratification!

I read an article, in Spin or Rolling Stone in the early 1980's, that featured the by-then forgotten founder of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett.  The writer contrasted Syd's songwriting voice with that of Roger Waters, who later assumed lead vocal and lyric writing chores after the band fired Syd.  Syd got fired from Pink Floyd due to his deteriorating mental state, aggravated by massive drug use, which, from the consensus of many, appeared to bear a diagnosis of schizophrenia.  Syd never received medicinal treatment during or after his initial hospitalization, and he lived as a recluse with his mother and his sister the rest of his life.

Syd's songwriting voice can fall under the heading of the happy lunatic.  Free form lyrics and offbeat subject matter inform his songs.  He embraced the role of happy lunatic, as seen by the title of his first solo album, Madcap Laughs.  Songs such as "Arnold Layne," about a guy who steals clothing from peoples' clotheslines, or more free form stuff such as "Apples and Oranges" can give people an idea of the direction his songs took.  With Syd's degeneration into actual madness, the happy lunatic role did not see him through those dark times.

Roger Waters, on the other hand, wrote lyrics that portrayed the singer as a mentally tortured and tormented mega-rock star.  Songs such as "Comfortably Numb," and "Goodbye Cruel World," bear out this take on his songwriting voice.  In truth, Roger Waters never played the role his songs had him playing in real life anymore than Syd's did.  In his case, I guess he just found his songwriting voice as that guy.

If one listens to Buck Owens songs about love and heartache and what a fool he is for the object of his desire in this or that song, one would never suspect that in real life Buck played the role of faithless womanizer who never even really attempted to stay loyal to any one of his wives or girlfriends.  Hank Williams Sr. gets credited with writing songs that really reflected his life, or at least his take on it.  "Cold Cold Heart," "Why Don't You Love Me," and "Your Cheatin' Heart," reveal a guy who just couldn't find the right woman.  His early exit from life, and the excessive drug and alcohol use that preceded it, has the now-accepted explanation that he suffered from very, very painful, undiagnosed spina bifoda.

Some of my best songs come from my life experiences, or rather, my take on them.  "Pardon Me Young Lady (But You've Double Parked Your Broom)," a song I posted on this blog about this time last year, comes from something I experienced.  A young lady who looked at me with a hexing, goo-goo type of eye one day while on my rounds inspired that one.  The mundane, everyday experiences that can inspire some good songs remains a topic that I might get into in some later post.

I bought a stereo system specifically to play what's left of my old vinyl collection, plus what ever new vinyl records I buy, because vinyl roared back into people's consciousness sometime earlier this century.  In  trying to replace some of  the records I desperately sold to record stores for cigarette money in the nineties, I found that some of the reissues don't cut it.  My reissue copy of Neil Young's Live Rust seems to suffer from a bad master recording.  Either that or a bad pressing.  Some of the record plays fine, but on the first side a lot of static comes forth during the acoustic performances.  

​I noticed static on the reissue of the Talking Head's Remain In Light, too.  My stereo plays other reissues fine, such as the two Stevie Wonder reissues I have, Innervisions, and Songs In The Key of Life.  I guess the issues with the Neil Young and Talking Head's records have to do with bad masters or bad pressings.  I can't tell, and that's just the problem with vinyl; very temperamental. Those are major label reissues.  The Bad Brains self-released reissue, forget about it.  The refund period expired on my receipt from the record store, and I don't even want to listen to it all the way through.  I haven't even touched on the problems with buying used vinyl, such as pops, skips, and worn out grooves.  

The CD section at Half-Priced Books doesn't have a lot of people combing over it when I go in there to shop, and I can usually find some things I like for about six or seven bucks.  CD's can have defects, but they seem a lot less common than defects found on either new or used vinyl.   The only one I've ever encountered with CD's is skips, unless I get a scratched up copy of someone else disc I'm borrowing.  For music to buy, there's the allure of flawless digital download copies, but there's no artwork or liner notes with those.

I've decided to patronize that business where, as of about a month and a half ago, that young woman worked, and where she maybe still works these days.  In my last post I said that I didn't want to go to this business because I didn't want her to accuse me of stalking her or otherwise bothering her.  Last night I thought again about how nice she acted towards me when I approached her for social reasons in late October of last year.  Then I thought again about MY accusation that SHE might frivolously accuse me of stalking her, and I decided to call bullshit on myself for that.  I think her kindness towards me when I approached her for social reasons last October sufficiently earned my trust to the point where saying she'd hysterically accuse me, for no good reason, of stalking her strikes me as really unfair.

My biggest source of frustration during the time after I approached her stemmed, in large part, from the feeling that nothing had changed between me and her.  That may be true, and I couldn't tell if it had.  I decided that things were going to change whether she was on board for that change or not, but rather than try to come in closer to her in some way, I decided to go the other way.  I hope that the distance I put between us and the time apart has helped calm me down to the point where I'm not nearly as anxious as I was for things to get somewhere between us.  If this young woman still works at this business, I believe she'll probably tolerate my presence to some extent, even at times she works there, as long as I don't get too crazy with all of that.