Forward Go
Earpollution has gone on "indefinite hiatus." We main players have all got enough other irons in the fire that we've had to make some choices about how we spend our time. I've got Solomon and the book to keep me busy, Craig Young has some photography projects and work with Pitchshifter's frontman J.S. Clayden to keep him off the streets and Eric J. Iannelli is trying to put together a literary magazine called Sybarite. Busy lads, all, and it has come time for us to recognize that we can't do everything all the time. Some of us are in our mid-thirties, after all.
It's been a good run, these last six years writing for Earpollution and I can't say that I'm going to miss some of the grind of reviewing records. I've got a wall full of CDs and a new iRiver MP3 player, and I'm looking forward to spending some time rediscovering the music that I already own. That isn't to say that the bug has left my system. I've finished the redesign of the music section of the site to act more appropriately as a portfolio of my work as a reviewer and to continue as an avenue for me to write about the interesting and eclectic music that I stumble upon. I'm going freelance, baby.
Symbolic has come back too. I just put up the first entry about dream machines yesterday at Opi8.com and, while I'll probably continue to eventually mirror them here for my own archival needs, I'm going to shunt folk there for the first week or so. The plan is to keep working through aspects of the novel and other discussions about symbolism as I continue on this interminable process of writing the BOOK OF LIES. While that title is just the working title, it's also a reference to the mystery text which haunts the novel and, in some ways, it strikes me as ironically appropriate that talk of the BOOK OF LIES may ultimately result in a phantom text which is never found (or written). It's a fanciful thought which makes me laugh, but not one that I want written on my tombstone: "Here lies Mark Teppo. He never finished the BOOK OF LIES." Time willing, this book will be done this year. Of course, I said that last year too...
I go back to work today. The Sounder train has been temporarily moved back to its old platform and I felt like I was stepping backward in time as I trudged up the old path beside the train tracks in the rain. I'm back in my old seat on the south side of the train. Some familiar faces, but a number of new ones as well. I wonder which of these folks had annexed my regular spot while I have been gone and are quietly wondering who I am to be sitting in their spot.
Crikey. I wonder if my desk is there at work...
Melissa and Solomon were up briefly this morning with me and I got to nuzzle my wide-eyed boy shortly before I left. I wonder if he'll miss me today; I wonder if his wee brain is developed enough to realize I'm gone. He's still at a stage where things outside of his vision don't exist and so every time he sees me now, it is like I've been recreated. But I wonder if he understands the passage of time enough to realize that I'm gone longer than normal.
[np: Enigma, Voyageur]