To begin, I think it possible that 1980's Nothin' Matters and What if It Did is the greatest album title ever. Mellencamp was just shy of turning 30 when this record (LP!) was released, and he probably just had some level of youthful rebellion on his mind when he chose the title. But life and experience seem to me to be proving this dark sentiment true as far as the larger world goes, and that's making me sad.

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But more on that later. Perhaps.

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When I was wrestling with this idea and remembered this ablum cover, I looked up Mellencamp's official web site and found there an interesting piece he recently wrote about the downfall of the music business. The progress and state of things he describes is, to some extent, what I got caught up in as I tried to "make it." Add to this the facts that my songs weren't always easy to categorize for the market and that I was far from MTV-handsome, and one result you can come up with is that a young man moves toward his middle years thinking himself a failure and wondering why he has this ability to make music (wondering if he has an ability at all). I think I've come to terms with--learned to be at peace with--the fact that I was up against forces beyond my control with nobody at my side but friends who believed. And in the end, that--the faith of friends--was probably the best I could hope for.

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Mellencamp's web site address is below. The article is mostly well written, although it could have stood another good proofreading. Here's my favorite passage: "The artist is here to give the listener the opportunity to dream, a very profound and special gift even if he's minimally successful. If the artist only entertains you for three and a half minutes, it's something for which thanks should be given. Consider how enriched all of our lives are made by songs from 'Like A Rolling Stone,' a masterpiece, to 'The Monster Mash,' a trifle by comparison."

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http://www.mellencamp.com/

Song for the Morning

Music: http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_Dizzy%20from%20the%20Distance.mp3

Words: http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_dizzy_from_the_distance.htm

Bermuda

Much of the traveling I do these days is to conferences--mostly literary conferences, now and then an honors conference. Usually I make these trips alone, but when I had a paper accepted for the Society of Early Americanist's 6th Biennial Conference in Hamilton, Bermuda, I decided to take the family.

After several false starts and backtrackings, we finally left Johnson City at around 7:30 on Tuesday night. Because this trip is to be followed up by three nights in Charleston (our annual vacation) we decided to drive to Atlanta and fly out of there. So, after a long drive through the night, we arrived in Atlanta a little after midnight.

On Wednesday morning we got up and took a shuttle from the motel to the airport. We made it through security and found our gate and settled down to wait.

Then my son made a bad discovery. Somewhere between the security area and the gate, a distance of little more than 100 yards, he lost his passport. He wouldn't be able to get into Bermuda without it, so we walked up and down the concourse, asking all the shopkeepers, security and airport personnel. Nobody had found it. The Delta folks announced boarding in 30 minutes, and we still had no passport. The search continued. I got on the telephone with Delta to find out if I could get refunds on our mucho dinero flight tickets, and while I was talking to them--while the plane was boarding--my wife and son showed up with the found passport!

The flight went well.

In Bermuda, we checked in at the conference hotel, the Fairmont Princess in Hamilton. The picture above is from the balcony of our room.

As usual my paper wasn't written when we arrived. My session was Thursday (today) at 1:15, so last night I stayed up late, taking the couple of introductory paragraphs I'd written in Johnson City and expanding them to about 7 pages for my 15-page presentation. I finished at about 1:30 in the morning, slept some, printed the thing out at the hotel's business center, ate lunch with my panel colleagues and participated in the session.

The rest of the week will be made up of listening to papers and cruising around the island.

Nice!