Next Monday I’ll be reading the seventh chapter of my book The Starting Gate at St. Andrews Bar And Grill in Green Lake. This chapter is titled “What Should I be Doing?”, and you could say that the entire book is both an response to—as well as a reiteration of—this question. For any artist the answer can be either easy and glib:“My art, what else?”; or excruciating and profound: “I have no idea, but I am doing it anyway.”
Life has meant a lot of changes for me in this past year or so. But I ain’t afraid. (Or, well, not much.) It ain’t the change that kills ya. (Or, well, not until it does.)
Here’s a quickie excerpt:
What should I be doing?
At the Starting Gate I always knew. Clear the rails. Drag and dump the trash cans. Clean the floors. Is it Wednesday? Then you better wax and buff them, too. Load beer. Stock the liquor shelves. Is it summer? Bag ice. Is it winter? Chop wood. But that was back when I was boy, learning to be a man. And the “what-should-I-be-doing?” question was a simple tactical one. Now is now, and now, like it or not—and I don’t like it at all—I am a middle-aged man, 13 years older than my father when he died and kicked off the perfect experiment, and my existential problem is no longer tactical, but stark strategy: trying to figure out what to do when there is nothing to do.
What should I be doing?
I got nothing
And here are the details:
When: Monday, August 18 at 8pm
Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103
Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know
How: Quick and dirty, the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.
Why: Why not?
