"From This Place" by Pat Metheny

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I read Metheny's thoughts and then listened carefully. Seems a good song for our times.

Lyric by Alison Riley

From this place I cannot see
hardest dark
beneath rising seas.
From this place I don't believe
all my hopes
my sweet relief.
From here I say I cannot breathe.
Fear and hurt
again we bleed.
Unsafe, unsound, unclear to me
don't know how to be.
From this place I must proceed
trust in love, truth be my lead.
From here I will stand with thee
until hearts are truly free.

Pat Metheny writes:

On November 8, 2016, our country shamefully revealed a side of itself to the world that had mostly been hidden from view in its recent history. I wrote the piece From This Place in the early morning hours the next day as the results of the election became sadly evident.

There was only one musician who I could imagine singing it, and that was Meshell Ndegocello, one of the great artists of our time. With words by her partner Alison Riley, they captured exactly the feeling of that tragic moment while reaffirming the hope of better days ahead.

That said, as I approach 50 years of recording and performing, while looking back on all the music I have been involved in, I am hard-pressed to immediately recall in retrospect the political climate of the time that most of it was made in. And if I can, the memories of those particulars seem almost inconsequential to the music itself.

The currency that I have been given the privilege to trade in over these years put its primary value on the timeless and transcendent nature of what makes music music.

Music continually reveals itself to be ultimately and somewhat oddly impervious to the ups and downs of the transient details that may even have played a part in its birth. Music retains its nature and spirit even as the culture that forms it fades away, much like the dirt that creates the pressure around a diamond is long forgotten as the diamond shines on.

– Pat Metheny

Command & Control

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Earlier, I described setting up default templates so my documents look just so. Shortly after posting that, the family and I began straightening, cleaning, and organizing the basement. I also cleaned my workshop and rehung the door to my nook so it doesn't drag on the carpet.

We were very productive, but there's more to it than just that.

I bet we're not the only ones organizing, raking the yard, putting books in order, cleaning hard drives, and cleaning the refrigerator shelves. Sure, we need something to do and have put these tasks off, but we also need some command and control in times such as this. Cleaning the basement, setting up a new word processing template, whatever we're doing, we do to feel something other than helpless.

In this morning's pages I wrote that the worst part of this whole thing is the uncertainty and the certainty. The virus is invisible to the naked eye. We can't know if we just breathed it in or if we carried it to someone we love. That's straight out of a horror movie1. The monster is out there, but we can't see it, don't know how to fight it, and have no idea when it will go away. The uncertainty is worse than awful but isn't all with which we must cope.

There is also the certainty, despite what the D.C. maggot says, that this will get worse and many people will die. We are certain this isn't a hoax. It isn't happening somewhere else. It won't be painless. We're certain of all that.

The one-two punch of certainty and uncertainty, well, it's crushing. We can wallow in that or go clean the basement.

I have this much command and control of the situation: the basement looks great and I smile walking through it. Not much, but maybe enough to help get through today and into the next. If so, well, that's just fine. It's enough.

What are you cleaning today?

1 No, I'm not looking forward to the COVID-19 movies that Hollywood will produce. Like movies about September 11, I'll be sure to avoid them.

Fonts & Templates

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I'll begin by saying that none of this matters, but it matters to me.

This week, seeking distraction, I opened Google Docs and Microsoft Word and worked on the fonts and styles in my standard templates.

I'll bet you're real excited to keep reading.

Standard templates are the blank document into which one types. Long ago, I decided on page margins (half-inch top and bottom, one-inch side to side) and a font combination (Playfair Display title and headings, Open Sans body text). In this time at home, lacking enough to do, I got to feeling it was time for a new look in Google Docs. Having been switched to Word at work (sigh), I needed a template there too.

This how I keep from checking headlines and watching news briefings.

I played with Segoe UI, Calibri, and others, but returned to Open Sans. I changed sizes, weights, and line spacing. Eventually, I settled on a template for Google and something similar for Word (described below for geeks and freaks). It's the first time I've changed my template in years.

This reminds me of the lined paper I designed years ago and printed at the school system's expense on used sheets of copy paper. This is the paper I use for Morning Pages. I printed maybe a thousand sheets of it prior to leaving the school.

The design of those sheets began simply, but I refined it over years of small changes: I switched from twenty-five to thirty-one lines, added spaces for the date and page number, switched to dotted lines, shrunk the right margin, and added ghostly line numbers. Eventually, it became the page I use today, a page I love using and which, if I were a rich man, I'd have bound into books.

Creating a new template isn't necessary, but the act of tinkering and refining is a good use of _my_time so long as I don't go overboard. The template is a tool of my craft and I'm happy with what I've created and with knowing that I will refine them, maybe today, certainly down the road. Good tools are worthwhile and refining a good tool is a delight.

But when I want to really write I avoid Google Docs and Word in favor of Writer, a minimal, distraction-free editor with almost no control over fonts or templates. I'm drafting and revising this in Writer because I'm trying to write, not present. I've formatted the blog for presentation and can concentrate now on writing and revising.

Font fiddling and template tweaking matters to me because presentation of craft matters. A good template is a good tool but has nothing to do with the craft of writing. Knowing to keep creation and presentation separate, now there's something that matters.

Template Details For Geeks And Freaks

Google Docs

  • Title: Baskerville 30 pt, dark blue
  • Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
  • Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 24 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 14 pt, dark blue
  • Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

Word (Slightly larger, no complementary title font)

  • Title: Open Sans Light 38 pt, dark blue
  • Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
  • Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 26 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 22 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
  • Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

If you've read this far, you're a geek.
If you try these in Google Docs and/or Word, you're my kind of freak.

Paying Attention

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I'm reading a book about paying attention. I read blogs about paying attention. I quit Facebook and Twitter so I would pay better attention. I write three pages every morning to pay attention. I'm typing this in order to pay attention.

Yet I can't seem to pay attention to much of anything right now.

There's the news onslaught, but that's pretty easy to dodge if I choose. I don't have to type nytimes.com, syracuse.com, or npr.org into my browser and they don't appear by magic. I don't listen to the radio and when I watch television it's usually something that I've cast to the screen. The news isn't robbing me of my attention.

My anxieties are. Things are all new. I'm home with my family (wonderful), working remotely (not wonderful), and worried about growing pandemic (really terrible). It's a lot of adjustment and so far I'm not doing great with it.

How about you?

It was nice outside today. I took my book and dog to the backyard. Groucho Marx wisely said that outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. The dog, a terrible reader, chose to roll in the grass. I tried to read my book. It's a tough book and I'm in a tough spot, so it didn't go well. The dog probably could have done better. Maybe I should have rolled in the grass.

My mother says she's in the same boat (mostly about reading, not rolling in the grass). Stuck at home she's trying to read Richard Russo, an author whose books are easy to fall into, but she just can't seem to stay with it.

I suppose we should give ourselves time. It's still early days and though today's sky was blue it still felt as if it was falling.

It's good to remember that while today (Thursday) and Tuesday were terrible days for concentration and attention, Monday and Wednesday were better. Jon Anderson sings I get up, I get down and John Denver says some days are diamonds and some days are stone. Who am I to argue?

I'm sitting in bed typing this. The cat is purring. I'm tired. Once I've posted this I'll have no need to pay attention. I can let go and drift gently to sleep. Tomorrow will be another day, another chance to try my best to pay attention. That's about all I can ask of myself right now.