Truth is I'm having trouble just carrying ooooonnnn

So when one has nearly 3000 songs on their computer its easy to forget/ overlook new music, and apparently I was on some sort of country honk rock and roll kick, or I wasn't and didn't realize it. Anyway, the point of the story is I just found a song with Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo on vocals and Wilco as the backing band that is totally old country and I'm pretty much totally in love with it. Don't be alarmed by the topic of this entry. I am fine and having no trouble carrying on. It's a lyric from said song.

Now that we have that out of the way...

1 week of school remains, all that stand between me and a relaxing 3 week break before summer school is 3 papers. One I have the rough draft done and a bunch of comments/ ideas to finish it, another i have a detailed outline, and another is only 6 pages long. Here in lies the problem. I am one lazy motherfucker. I really want to be finished with all this shite by April 10. Then I would have bearly a month of pre summer vaca, vaca. I think that would be amazing. I have 3 months of Vogue to catch up on. Not to mention cuntless hours of sleep, movies and things around the apartment to do. Stay tuned to see if I can buckle down and get things accomplished.......

Part of this is dependent upon how confident I am in my academic abilities. Part of my weekly school routine now involves feeling intensely competent at one moment and then incredible dumb at the next. It's been a rollercoaster ride this semester in regards to my smartness. It's not a plea for ego boosting, it's more a reflection.

I've also been thinking about writing more and more as an art form. Its not much different from creating a painting or writing a song, the medium is inherently what changes. There's mediocre art, music and writing, but what takes great works to the next level? There's technique in art, theory and a grasp of rhythm, scales etc in music, and sentence structure and grammer in writing, but what else? A song can be technically solid and still suck, same with a painting, if you don't have the inherent something else to make something good great, then what do you do? Do you have to be content to strive for what amounts to mediocrity, or can you learn to be better? Often when I write things it just happens. I don't consciously think about it, the words fall onto the page. The more structured I get the worse it comes out sounding. I also have a very basic understanding of grammer and sentence structure, I know the basics, but if I were asked to articulate it to somebody I would have no diea how to explain the basic concepts of language and sentence structure. It Just Happens. I just do it, and somehow it always seems to work out.

Part of what really excites me about writing is getting to play with language and see how fluid it is. Also at the same time, whenever I write, there is a small part of me that has Orwell's Politics in the English Language in the back of my head the whole time.

Part of what worries me the most about next year (and the next year, depending on how things work out) is not being in an envoronment that constantly challenegs my mind and writing skills. Left to my own devices I will read magazines and trashy novels exclusively. I don't want to let my mind get fat and out of shape. But I also feel mentally like I am on the home stretch of a 100mile marathon and I need to rest my aching feet and recover a bit.
It's a quandry for sure....

Time for my pre-dinner cocktail hour now....
yeah mint bailey's.....