[_Journalized_11.17.2011_]

Ms. Brown and I went to an open mic, last night. It's been years since I've done any such thing.

This one was held at this little Scottish pub: The Haven. It was pretty close to perfect. Starting at about ten o'clock, two talented and personable fellows played a few songs and then invited others to do the same. Ms. Brown played "Ottawa" and "Geneva". I played "Party By Myself" (not mine, but Dan Bern's) and "Who's On Your Shoulder Now?" (mine). No signup lists, no weirdos, no bullshit. Heard some good music, some very good singing, and, because this was a small Scottish pub, we all consumed a bit of ale. Let's just say that it's been a slow Thursday morning.

Before that, yesterday was a day of writing, and getting through the endless gray light that seems to have perma-cloaked Boston. The new short story is called "The Coffin Door" — have you picked up a copy of the newly published "The Dirt Baby"? — and it's turned into something a bit unusual: a series of psychiatrist-patient interview transcripts, and some notes from the psychiatrist's laptop files, and then a short series of photographs. The photographs, as it turns out, at this stage of the writing, tell the end of the story. Oh, and there's a facsimile of some handwritten notes found at the patient's home.

So, the piece is going to take a week or two to finish, as I've got to assemble a few items that need to be in the photographs — particularly, the door of its title — and then go to an old house I know about up on the North Shore of Massachusetts and make the pictures. One hopes there's an editor out there in the world willing to find all of this foolishness interesting, and not simply annoying. And so it goes.

Have just downloaded Greil Marcus's new book about The Doors, titled: The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years. Recently, NYT writer Dwight Garner got something essential down on paper about the experience of reading Marcus:

"Reading Mr. Marcus at his best … is like watching a surfer glide shakily down the wall of an 80-foot wave, disappear under a curl for a deathly eternity, then soar out the other end. You practically feel like applauding. He makes you run to your iPod with an ungodly itch in your cranium. You want to hear what he hears. It’s as if he were daring you to get as much out of the music as he does."

Yes, I agree. And, more please.