01-25-09 LA CA: 2230 hrs. I hope to get the lights out soon and get some sleep. I will be up very early in the morning. What a week. I am still thinking about Obama’s inaugural speech and how the last president had to listen to the whole thing in front of over a million people who were so happy to see him go. It’s all the get back I’ll ever get so I watched it twice. I saw a photo of President Obama on the cover of the LA Times a few days ago. He was in the Oval Office, sitting behind the desk. I couldn’t stop staring at it. It will take me some time to catch up on the new president’s first week as I was busy with my own week but I’ll read up on it when I get a chance. I am always interested in a president’s first week. It says a lot.
Last week, Heidi and I worked for many hours on a book project. We are going to try to get two books out this year. The first one, A Preferred Blur is set to come out in April and another, tentatively titled A Mad Dash, will come out in November if all goes accordingly to plan. It is the AMD manuscript that we were working on and will resume on Monday morning. A lot of the book was written in notebooks and has to be transcribed. She and I came up with a system that seems to work well. She reads out loud and I type. I think we’ll get all the notebook stuff knocked out this week and then we’ll be able to start troubleshooting the chapters. I think we can have the manuscript done ahead of schedule. I am giving myself a few months for completion and I think we can bring it in a few weeks early. That would be great as I am starting another writing project and would like to have the decks clear so I can get into it.
Two old talking records are back in print after a long absence, Live At McCabe’s and Human Butt. We did some level adjustment on HB and some slight panning and it sounds better than the older version from many years ago. We are going to continue to work on the re-issues and hopefully have all titles back in print this year.
I have been back from Africa for several days now and am starting to miss the Sahara. I can’t wait to get back there again. I have been thinking about it every day since I left. I am looking forward to reading the books I got on the Sahara that should be showing up any day now. I have been checking out the music of some of the bands from Mali for awhile now and want to hear more. So far, the ones I listen to the most are Tinariwen, Tartit, Terakaft Toumast and Etran Finatawa. Some really great music they make. I don’t know if it would be everyone’s thing but I am liking what I am hearing so far.
I got in a lot of listening today. Mostly Keiji Haino and Fushitsusha records which made for an interesting soundtrack to write and clean to. Here’s the link to an article I thought was interesting. It made me think:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I have a long week of book work, voice overs, meetings, press, etc. and it all starts a few hours from now so I better get the lights out. Thanks for reading. –Henry