Monday, October 14, 2013

Nashville

Where've I been? Nashville, Tennessee, seeing things country and sustainable. Steve had a conference to go to, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, no less, where he and his fellow Associate Director won an award.

Through the week we went to

John Hartford's grave. He wrote a song that Glen Campbell played endlessly and I can't remember, but Steve does. Hartford organized a special feature by his gravesite, a pergola, where musicians can go and play their music.


And yes, Steve did.

Steve and Susan sharing the award for excellence in innovative programme development. Yeah Canada. Yeah Steve.

We visited the Rhyman Museum, where the Old Opry was originally shown. For those of you who don't much like country music, the Ballet Russe, the Vatican Choir, Anna Pavlova (ballerina of great fame) and many others performers were onstage.




 We saw Ricky Skagg. He started playing at the Old Opry when he was seven and he's now about 600 years old and looks it. I'm saying to myself, 'Who's Riky Skagg?" but everyone else is "Oh Wow". It was a fun experience to go to this old place. Very well maintained, amazing acoustics, cool interior, but the show on the stage. Mhe.


 Except for the first night, when we collapsed around 7:30 pm (our time 9:30 but we'd been up since 5:00 am) we heard live music every night. It was everywhere. Steve was on top of where to go see who. Three others were with the Dalhousie Group. We had fun conversations, shopping and of course, professional activities during the day. I spent two days revising a short story and embroidering a linen shirt.


There are little stains from beads that rusted. I am using the stains as the centre of flowers. Re-use, Re-cover.

I have sent in a total of 45 pages to my writing mentor and have revised and rewritten and agonized over these for ages. Hopefully, the book is better, but at this juncture, it feels like it needs to be started from the very beginning again. It is interesting how a sentence now looks. I used to read a sentence and hope the meaning sunk in and be doubly grateful if I remembered the general gist of a story for more than a few weeks. These days, I read a sentence I have written and start to break out in hives. Is this what I meant to say. Is it relevant to the plot, is it in character, what about the big picture, the small picture, the five senses, which tense am I using? Am I consistent, am I consistently inconsistent where needed, and who the hell is Mavis? Actually, there isn't any Mavis anywhere in my writing, but Mavis now represents the "what the hell am I reading?" moment when I don't recall having written it.

For my own sanity, the expediency of getting this blog out most Mondays and not losing sight of Hot Flash Woman, all agonizing is forbidden in my blog-land. Write, save and hit the publish button. I own the publish button on this blog and if it's good enough for me, it's good enough to hit. I love the publish button. It doesn't argue with me.



1 comment:

  1. Nashville??? wow...my husband would love to go there. Good luck with your writing Laureen,...........

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