dear reader,

are you enjoying the fall air? our apartment is actually quite cold, since september is not the time for heat, and that’s made it an excellent week for hot food.

the weather and temperature have not conferred any special advantage, however, on my songwriting this week. the clear evenings and slow mornings seem promising, often, but i forget quickly how much timing (and precise timing, at that) is of the essence.

generally, things go something like this: inspiration strikes and i write some good songs, effortlessly; then, excited by the new material, i decide to write some more songs; lastly, with much effort and not much success, i give up on writing ’til the inspiration strikes again, and come away with a newly-minted resolution to respect the visitation of that inspiration.

(if i were a literary device, i would certainly be that of the untrustworthy narrator. how do i lose something that i’ve lost and subsequently found so many times prior? on one hand, such a propensity to weakness is something i strive against as i struggle to build continuity of consciousness that i do not feel as a fragmented person in a fragmented world. on the other, each new day brings its newness as strongly as it brings its misremembering. perhaps i should be thankful.)

inspiration: the unseen movement of an unknown, shorthand for what is probably a long list of misunderstood phenomena. all i can say is that it is fleeting.

“boldness has genius in it” comes to mind–perhaps on the subject of an impetus to strike while the proverbial iron is hot?–not only because of its content, but because its widely-attributed author, goethe, didn’t say it. some scottish guy, in a work published 1951, included the famous “translation” with some of his own writings on a similar subject. i suppose it’s possible that he deliberately fabricated the line, but i’d like to think its much more likely that he simply misremembered.

yes, fleeting: both inspiration and memory. maybe there’s only room in us for one.

dear reader,

good morning, and welcome to the first day of 2009 as history will remember it. in the near future, the past 19 days will likely be relegated to phrases like “amidst a worsening financial crisis,” and the bitter cold that so recently swept the majority of our country isn’t even going to get that much attention.

by the time i’ve finished this post, we will probably be only a few minutes away from the first words of a greatly, enthusiastically anticipated president’s inaugural address. this is a man riding an incredible wave of centrist popular sentiment, like a more global, liberal ronald reagan, swearing on lincoln’s bible and reaching hard for the heights of fdr’s historical acclaim.

but despite his every effort to enter the white house in a great cloud of history, the forty-fourth president de los estados unidos represents to the world one thing: change. america is anticipating newness. i, in a rare moment of non-isolation and waning misanthropy, am waiting for it, too, standing in my heart on the mall as one of millions. if someone, chosen as a celestial juror for his or her ignorance of irrelevant detail, looks on objectively and perceives a slight difference in my attitude, it is perhaps the eagerness rather than fear with which i expect the annihilation of the known, and the person to whom my expectation is directed.

change, as i have written before and will write again, is the principal in a great mission. it sweeps aside–abstracts out–inconsequentials too beloved and incidentals too familiar. the new details of existence it brings are despicable by design, and the lesson is clear: despise the particulars, the incidentals; or, if you must love them, do it for their absolute dispensability and for the sake of the rock these receding sands uncover.

i cannot match the power of james a. garfield’s expression at his inauguration: “we may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation. is it not possible for us now to make a truce with time by anticipating and accepting its inevitable verdict?”

happy 2009, good reader; happy truce.