Old Folks woke up with the writing roaring
in his head.
When that happened, all you could do was get up and write.
Sleep later. Sleep when you are dead.
He was going to make one road trip
through Florida's Emerald Coast. One should do it.
Drive up to where he
used to work, Defuniak Springs, over to Eglin AFB, down to Fort Walton Beach, back
home through Destin, the sleepy little sleeping village, which actually was a sleepy
little fishing village, in 1975.
* * *
He heard from Larry who said he got Book I of OLD FOLKS AT HOME and was enjoying
it.
Book II would be shorter.
He would have one road trip left.
Book III. "Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park."
He would go over
to Live Oak and camp out. On a weekend with no big festival planned. Just local
pickers, parking-lot pickers, people jamming around the old campfire. With kids
lugging instrument cases around. Sitting in.
* * *
Rented Be Cool last night, and checked Elmore Leonard's The Hot
Kid out of the library.
Be Cool had some self-referential humor,
like Steven Tyler saying he wasn't one of those musicians who wanted to be in a picture
(he was a musician in a picture), or John Travolta putting down sequels (Be Cool
is a sequel to Get Shorty, that is, he was starring in one).
Okay,
that's the movie business and the music business. Elmore Leonard ought to write
a book about how crazy the book business is. How people in the book business are
like shylocks. With no sense of irony.
Look at me. All I'm going to do
is finish writing Book II. If that.
* * *
Later.
I went on my drive and was home by 8:00 a.m. I must have
left at 3:30 a.m.
I didn't stop anywhere because nothing was open yet.
I didn't write any poems in my composition book because it was still dark.
I did list the topics I want to cover, from here to the end of Book II.
Now
all that remains is to write it.