New job, new music, new plans for December

It’s the first of August, and I know I haven’t posted anything on here since March, when I was in Paris, life was, well, cold, for one thing, and I was half way through a semester of school. I know that very few people read blogs for the updates on what people are up to, ultimately. I mean, sure, the few people out there named Walter and the handful that ask about me might want to know what’s going on, but really, the –and if you only knew how much I hate this word– blogsphere is a lot like the real world: it’s populated by a lot of people, a few of which stand out. I’m not trying to stand out, and I really couldn’t care less whether I get famous for my blog or for anything else (besides, how likely is it that this could make me famous, honestly?), but my point is that people read other people’s blogs not because they want the daily update (unless the writer is in, say, France, or better yet, Japan), but because they want new information. Intriguing ideas. Commentary on modern life. Observations on the world we live in. Wit. All of the sort of things you don’t get when I do nothing but say “here’s what I’ve been up to while you’ve been doing things in your own life that are just as interesting to you as my life is to me.” In other words, why should you care? So as I fill you in on the last few months’ activity, I’ll try and throw in a good share of musing on love, writing, art, sales, summer heat, driving with the windows down, and maybe good music. Possibly food.
It is with a mix of ecstatic joy, bewilderment, and shame that I come to you today with the announcement that I am getting married. Not just in the sense that any eleven year old with a dream can say “I’m getting married” abstractly, but in an actual, we-have-a-date-and-there-will-be-a-real-live-bride sort of way. The shame comes in because this happened almost two months ago. At the same time, I don’t feel too bad, really, because if you’re just now finding out, and this web page is the source of the info… Well, that should sort of say something right there. Updating my web page is sort of low on the list sometimes, and I’m not apologizing for it. The ecstatic joy comes because, well, I’m getting married. After years of praying for just the right person, waiting, raising my standards to irrational levels, and fending off the minute by minute attacks of female after lascivious female, I am now engaged to Kirsten, and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it. Which is where the bewilderment comes in. How on earth did someone like me end up with someone like her? I know I can’t be the only one scratching my head on this one. I’m geeky and unsure and can be pretty fumbling sometimes. But I guess that’s part of what love is about. When Kirsten and I were first starting all of this, she was concerned that I’d get tired of this or that about her or that such and such would freak me out, and I can’t see any of that. They say love is blind, but I say it’s just focused. When you have an eye on what matters, the essentially trivial things like the geek factor of an English degree or a stumbling social sense start looking like the distractions they are and fall away. Love means a commitment to stepping beyond the insecurities we find in each other to take on the rest of what we find, which is beautiful and perfectly suited to each other. So anyway, we’re getting married in December, right after the end of the fall semester, and that will really be the start of something new. We put the whole story of the journey, the engagement, etc. up on The Knot if you want to read it. It’s a good story.
The other really big news of late is actually the same reason I’m sitting here writing all of this. I have down time at a new job that I just started yesterday at Prototype Advertising here in Lynchburg. I’m working full-time until school starts, dropping back to two days a week after the start of the semester, and then coming on full-time after the first of the year when I get back from my honeymoon. And yes, I realize I had (still have, for a semester) a great job at Liberty. I know I was teaching, and it was great, and I found something I love. So why the switch? Well, it’s nothing too scandalous. I was sort of in a bit of a career limbo working at Liberty; without my master’s, I couldn’t teach full-time, and I could only teach Basic Composition, which is a good class and all, but most of all, I couldn’t stay long term. To keep teaching, I need to go back to school, and if I don’t keep teaching, I need to look around for another job anyway. So it’s not like I could stay forever, and I understand that. So the opportunity came up to work here at Prototype as a full-time copywriter, and I had to jump on it. The people I work with are nice, the company’s first-rate, the pay is good, the insurance benefits (which I didn’t have before, being part-time) are crucial going into a marriage, and besides all of that, the job is great. I get to write for a living! Advertising copywriters are the people who come up with the wording for the advertisements you see in print or on television or hear on the radio. We work with the artists to achieve an overall concept, so after we write a paragraph about shoes, the artists put that text into the shape of a shoe, etc. So I’m writing advertisements, letters, brochures, radio and TV scripts, you name it. Some of the work is concepting, too, so if I decide that the new client would best be served with a radio ad about a bobsledding aardvark, I brainstorm until I can work out a concept, and we go from there. The guy who came up with “Your Way, Right Away” for Burger King? Probably a copywriter. “Pizza, Pizza.” Copywriter. “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” “For fast, soothing relief, nothing works like Preparation H.” I wasn’t in the room when those taglines were first uttered, but there’s a good chance that a copywriter came up with each one. So not only do I get to write for a living, which is a big part of my dream job description, but I get to write creatively pretty often as well, so I’m excited. This represents, of course, the most thorough commercialization of art that the business world has to offer, and I know that there are a ton of artists of various sorts who despise that. Duchamp in the graphic art world, Bukowski in the literary world, Roger Waters and a million others in the musical world… And as much as I agree with them that a person’s primary artistic expression shouldn’t be motivated by pay, I think that’s just another reason to make a distinction in what I do for work and what I do for expression and “the arts.” And maybe they’d all agree with me. I don’t know any of them personally. (And from what I know of them, I don’t know that I’d like to, honestly.)
Virginia is unbearably hot for two full months out of every year and every other day for two more. The long term goal is Seattle. That way I can stop wishing for the sweet release of death every time I get in my car when it’s been outside and not running for more than an hour. Even so, come Seattle, amen.
I took up a self-imposed challenge recently. I figured there was no way that an entire decade of music deserved to be written off entirely. If ever there was a decade that seems to deserve it, though, it’s either the 60’s or the 70’s. I didn’t quite have the ambition to take on the 60’s, because I don’t have any strong leads there, but I can enjoy the Clash or the early Police records any day, more than almost any other music I own, so I thought I’d have a go at the 70’s and see where things ended up. I’m pleased to say that I’ve fared well. I only found one record that I’d never heard any of at all, but there was plenty that I hadn’t given enough attention to, so there were brilliant new discoveries, even from names I was familiar with, and it’s been a good month. A few recommendations for the next time you’re in a discovering mood and have a couple of bucks.
Meddle by Pink Floyd. Ahead of it’s time in a big way, like everything they did, but seriously, I mean AHEAD of it’s time. Andrew Lloyd Webber blatantly ripped off “Echoes” for the most famously recognizable broadway instrumental part ever, the main scary song from The Phantom of the Opera. Pink Floyd put this album out 15 years before.
Marquee Moon by Television. Part of the NYC late 70’s punk scene running out of CBGB’s and the like, but way different from everyone else. Cool guitar interplay, and it sounds pretty timeless. A cool surprise from a name I’d heard of but ended up wishing I’d paid attention to a lot sooner.
Pink Moon and Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake. I’d heard probably half of these songs before, but it was good to hear the rest for the first time, and I appreciated Nick Drake a lot more after listening through both of these records. Pink Moon has one of those interesting, predicted-his-own-death sort of stories to it, too, but depending on who you believe, Nick Drake committed suicide, so maybe it wasn’t that prophetic. Good music.
Chairs Missing by Wire. Post-punk band doing weird stuff with recording techniques and electronics. People who think that “challenging” records have just started coming out in the last few years have never seriously listened to jazz or to this record or 154, the one after it. Or a bunch of other stuff.
OK, well, my down time is at an end, so this is coming to an abrupt ending, but there it is. Until next time…

Kent