I have been somewhat unforgivably absent as of late, and for I apologize. What can I say other then I was too busy with life to write about it? It happens to the best of us so its positively expected when it come to the worst.

As it happens, oh dear and gentle reader, I found myself in sort of a day job jamboree. Part of what I do for living, the part that I can talk about publicly is I am a producer.  Unlike a lot of producers I don’t function in one medium. Which makes me an oddball amongst the odd balls. I move freely from music to TV, to film, theater, and the odd corporate spectacle. Though as of late I tend to avoid theater, mostly because it is too fleeting- I have been enjoying art that is more permanent, and that provides an ongoing revenue stream.

You would think that I would take these valuable pixels to hype these various and sundry projects, but not so much.  For the most part I have to many other topics to cover here. However in case your curious over the past year I have: produced a pilot for TV called Conversation-set to air in the fall, God and various and sundry executives willing, Produced a record for the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble (out in May on Cuneiform)(with Brian Jacoby), produced a record by the Vibro Champs (out in July on Sideshow records)(with Adam Krinski), Halfway through a Holy Roman Empire record (that’s just me), Did soundtracks for the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the Bakery on Grand, composed some Hair Show music. Finished the four-year odyssey that is M-80 the movie, and consulted on a dozen or so other projects. This is in between publishing a few things here and there, a day gig (@IPR) and opening a salon with my wife (which opens sometime this summer). The funny thing is I would think of this as one of my less active years.

In any case I say this not to boast about my skills as a day laborer, rather to set up the thing that didn’t happen. Part of producing is spending a lot of pre prep time on a project that might not happen. I spent part of the last year pitching, prepping, and planning a movie that died on the vine two weeks before the shoot date, that my friends are heart breaking.

The whoseits an whatsits are unimportant, sometimes things just fall apart, this cause of this one is nothing to do with artistry personality, or technology really if you wanted to blame something blame insurance. These things happen; really this just serves to justify my absence from regular contribution here. In the beginning I didn’t have time, as I franticly prepared for the biggest shoot of my life. The last week or so I have been too bummed to want to really communicate with anyone- the reality is this would have been the “big movie” guaranteed to get on cable, the one where I didn’t have to explain who the artists were and why this had value.  Which is a valuable consideration coming from the land of cult favorites (read as good but unpopular). For all the kajillions of projects I have worked on, nothing has sold more then 25,000. Which in the indy realm is pretty good, but it’s not gold.

I know that wanting a gold record is petty and vein, but I don’t recall ever saying I wasn’t petty or vein. The reality is I want one, not to be showy, but because I think it would be neat. Its not that it changes your career, hell I have known a guy who had multiple gold records and worked the French fry machine at the MacDonald’s in Golden Valley. I know other guys with rooms full of them and it doesn’t make them happy; though truth be told I do think they rather enjoy the royalties.

The gold is nice, but its only a trinket- really, it is just a symbol, the fact that you were a part of a thing that effected a lot of peoples lives. That’s the cool part, the award that’s just a certificate of completion. Yet still, I want it. Every ball player wants a bigger crowd, and even when you get the biggest, is it enough? You have to play ball because you love the game, and whatever team your on is the greatest, all that said you still want to play in the World Series.

More then just my personal stabs at glory; I just wish the film were being made. It isn’t. So you take a deep breath, possibly get drunk for a night, and then you start over. Like Sonny and Cher said ”the Beat goes on”…

One downside to daily blog writing, well Monday through Thursday blog writing in my case… is that you write as you need to, I set aside time write, comeback, write, comeback edit. Generally speaking that works. My schedule is more like a task list then a concrete structure, that works fine for me, that is unless you have a day like today. Those are the days that you get thrown a curve ball. Today I got a curve ball.

I found out that a old friend died, now if you have been reading this site with the slightest of regularity you can tell i am sentimental, overly so. Friends that I haven’t seen in years I think of , wondering what they went on to do with their lives. friends from grade school, people from temp jobs. Now. please realize oh dear and gentle reader that i have a near legendary level of forgetfulness as well. I can forget almost anything with ease; I once pulled over to the side of the road to hear a song on a staticy college radio station, telling my wife I had to find out what this song playing was. She looked at me weirdly and said Ok. I said I wanted to immediately go and purchase said record, again she just looked at me like I was crazy and nodded. Of course the announcer came on and I realized it was a song I had put out on my label.

Like I said forgetful, I did say that didn’t I… but then wicked deep of weird and arcane knowledge, its how my head is wired, different then factory specs, but I am not complaining.

The hardest things are people that you have difficult or unresolved issues with, like all humans I have a few. Today i decided I was going to resolve one. If not resolve it, make some sort of effort, i had tried before but that was a decade ago. Harold was a friend of mine 18 years ago, we were club kids back in the day, going to First Avenue, hanging out, chasing girls, wearing skirts, and talking about film. In my late teens and early twenties we were close. Until the time that we weren’t. Thats what happens when youre 21 you have moments good bad, and you grow. Of course what came between us ultimately was a girl, but then isn’t it always. Without getting into details Harold and I never spoke again, the girl broke my heart so severely It was in a cast for some time after. life went on, my heart survived to be broken again, the next time not so easily though.

Whenever I saw him, he avoided me, I would wave or say hi- and he would just stare past me like an executive avoiding panhandlers. He would walk to the other side of the street rather then be on the same side as me. Its like he just couldn’t ever let go of the past, personally I ‘d long since forgiven any past wrongdoings, because you sort of have to. To some extent life is like a bookshelf, you only have so much room and if you want to keep the good books you have to dodge the bad ones.

When I got sick, (see post below) I decided that I needed to put it in human terms, so I named my disease Harold, after someone that I had a good relationship with that went bad, but I hoped to someday repair. what really gets me is that he had passed away a month before I named it, but right around when i was diagnosed, The timing of that is just a little too eerie.

He and I had made a film in 1991 about Lillian Colton, a Seed art pioneer, and a woman who i just truly adored. She passed away earlier this year, and several people had asked about this film which I never had a copy of. I had given his name to various people but none felt like doing the effort to find him. So today, I tried- the first web page that came up for him was his obituary. No information other then who had survived him. So his death, like most of his life save that period of time when we ruled a small corner of small night club, in a small city, in a small country, in a very big universe, was a mystery. Now there will never be that resolution that I always hoped would come. So I sit in my basement and listen to David Sylvian, and type it to people that didn’t know him, in fairness maybe I didn’t know him either. But, we did spend some time together a long time ago.