Et al

So I’ve been hitch-hiking down a long and lonesome road. Galloping around the southeast making as little sense as possible, and I mean that very literally. I suppose I mean that in general as well. When people ask me what I’ve been doing the past 3 months or so I come back with three different answers: promoting a concert series with Bigboi from OutKast, working on my novel, and relentlessly stalking Jeff Goldblum. All three are completely true, but I dare you to find out which is the most accurate.

And on this gorgeous Australia Day I finally have found my feet on the asphalt long enough to update ye olde Long Sunset. But who knows what to write about, and who knows if I should be writing at all (at this moment…not necessarily in general). 2011 has the makings of a very strange year for me (hell, read that first post, does any of that make sense? Except for that last paragraph; I was possesed) and I'll take it as it comes. Direction is important for me now, and for all of us always.

I’ve been writing this blog for a deceptively long time. Nearly six years. So many visits from Google mercenaries, so many tirades on John Kerry’s campaign style (John Kerry!), so many semi-lucid ramblings about my nights and days at the bottom and top of the brain highway, and so many ugly nights full of deep pure darkness. The Long Sunset has seen it all. And so have you.

But I haven’t been updating my recent insanity (as well as general), because I don’t know where to go with it. I used to go anywhere. I used to flip open the laptop, crack open a fresh Stella, suck down a cloud of opium and let her rip on whatever Tennessee William’s micro-drama was playing in my head at the given time. Politics, death, drugs, Orlando’s infrastructure, lies, wars, pumpkins, Smash Brother’s, walls that fell, John Kerry!……it never mattered. I just went. But I feel myself thinking more now when I post here, and I wonder if that’s positive. At the very least, it’s made me less productive.

To be totally honest, the reason I used to write this blog with such impunity was because hardly anyone read it. It almost worked solely as a back-up disc. I had some core and very appreciated readers (and some who even get my on-going Google mercenary jokes), but the difference in the amount of people who read the Long Sunset now as compared to 2006 is a bit of a crossover for me.

Easy at first, because all I had to write about was Mike. And all I still have to write about is Mike. But now I’m not sure what context to deliver those Local on 8’s on. Every time I write something now I wonder if it should stay in The Journal, or hit the TLS super-highway.

And hell, I know the answer. But I guess the whole point of this post is that I haven’t completely lost the illusion; at least not officially. I could have gone on a 1k word rampage on the State of the Union address (really John Boehner, did you think a purple tie counted as partisan? Fuck off), but has that become inappropriate in this setting? This place? I’m not sure.

So that text sat on the laptop for about 6 hours. Then I realized what I was really writing. Not a questionnaire into what the Long Sunset should contain from this point forward, but a warning. I’m going to attack this blog, my writing, and life (in its basic sense), the way everyone should, and put the pedal down heavily. Nothing’s sacred, and all is revered. I’m going to write from the hip.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.