*Focus,* man. *Focus*!

My problem is, I lack focus. Like way back in high school too. Drifting mind, can’t sit still, rather smoke pot in the parking lot, six of us in a VW bug in the ridiculous Fort Lauderdale sun, sure beats Jane Austin I thought, I just couldn’t focus.

Also I can’t finish stuff. Accordingly, wrote the book on finishing stuff, with Danelle Morton, Finishing School, still can’t finish stuff. Lead workshops telling people how to finish stuff but can I finish anything? Sheesh.

Golly!
... and etc. ... a freeform post, fun to listen to, gets me out of a jam deadline-wise!--ct

Transcript

My problem is, I lack focus. Like way back in high school too. Drifting mind, can’t sit still, rather smoke pot in the parking lot, six of us in a VW bug in the ridiculous Fort Lauderdale sun, sure beats Jane Austin I thought, I just couldn’t focus.

Also I can’t finish stuff. Accordingly, wrote the book on finishing stuff, with Danelle Morton, Finishing School, still can’t finish stuff. Lead workshops telling people how to finish stuff but can I finish anything? Sheesh.

Golly!

So I figure let it rip freestyle, who cares if it jumps around, makes no sense, seems self-indulgent, who’s paying?

Self-indulgent? You must be kidding, sir. Just trying something new to stay on schedule. Like in high school, showing up in class stoned, w/out the assignment, wiggling along, free-forming it, going extemporaneously into the wild blue nowhere.

Thing is, it’s Thursday, Blog-time! And I got nothing but this!

I could tell you about my day. How about it? Woke up 3am bad dream, best friend pulled me over, was suddenly a cop, how’d that happen?…peed and got back to sleep after a dose of Chris Cuomo on CNN, and then … Yoga with SarahBeth! and off to l’Ospedale San Donato for more stupid tests. Then my brother Jonathan calls from the sailboat he’s staying on … and I go by Navini for some strings because I’m playing a new song I made in English and Italian — calling it “Inglesiano” no not the song, the mixing of the two languages in the song. Song is called “I’ll Be Waiting For You/Ti Aspetterò.”

For the longest time I thought blogs were the most boring thing ever. “Web log,” wordified into “weblog,” shortened to “‘blog”: Scott Rosenberg in maybe 2000 or so gathered us Salon employees to explain how “web logs” could revolutionize storytelling and reporting on the still-kinda-nascent World Wide Web. Salon had purchased “The Well” in 1999 … We were on the forefront of everything, back end of nothing, headed for oblivion over and over … again …

(Oh yeah, here it is:

“Salon purchased the virtual community, The WELL, in April 1999 (switching to its current URI salon.com at roughly that time), and made its initial public offering (IPO) of Salon.com on the NASDAQ stock exchange on June 22 of that year.[21] Subsequently, for the month of October 1999, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Salon had over 2 million users.[22]“)

Anyway, we made big-time use of the blog format, mainly at that time for tracking evolving stories. The web log was a rolling account of breaking stories mostly, updated in real time.

Came in handy on 9/11. Remember when Jake Tapper was writing for Salon.com? Those were the days! Still enjoy him on CNN from Italy, watching “The Lead” at 10pm Italian time. 22.00 as we say here. Still trying to get used to the 24-hour clock. Speaking of clocks, at the hospital this morning (got an “ecografia” of my innards: Everything’s apparently looking fine so far.) …  all the clocks showed different times. I’m guessing it’s because the clocks are on the AC circuit and every time the power goes off at the hospital (the lights went out twice while I was there on Tuesday) the clocks stop, and who’s really that time-conscious to climb up there and reset them correctly, when everybody’s got the exact right time on their smartphones anyway.

I’m messing with the syntax, free-flowing, who cares it’s just a blog. Ha ha that was what I hated about the form for so long: It was so undisciplined, so self-indulgent! 

Anyway, ever use the Wayback Machine? It’s totally cool. Here’s what was on Salon in April 2006.

Meanwhile, something actually happened yesterday: I had lunch with a translator and she told me to finish the book.

No surprise. How translators work. Must have a thing that’s finished.

Short column. David Talbot has the right idea. Post something every couple days at least. Don’t get hung up on how long. Just write with passion, clarity, honesty, and do it often.

I got too tangled up with the mechanics. But it’s late, I’ve been to the hospital too much this week, just for boring tests, boring, boring, boring, but can’t think well afterwards. Maybe it’s flashbacks. Anyway, I thought I’d just start writing.

So the translator told me to finish the book. It was great. We met in Arezzo and searched for a caffè, finally found a table outside a restaurant that wasn’t open yet, asked if we could at least sit, drink some water, I told her the whole Stones of Le Santucce story, including the sad fact that Alfeo Tanganelli died a few weeks ago, a staggering loss, we’re still hung over, still grieving, and then the restaurant opened and we were hungry so I had carbonara and she had pici. Told her the whole story, about the bombing, Mirella meeting Carlo on a train in 1952 and them getting married, having Miranda, Alfeo marrying Miranda, then rebuilding Le Santucce out of rubble.

Boring stuff maybe but it’s Thursday and I promised to do something every Thursday. Seriously, David Talbot, as usual, has the right idea.

I wrote a whole chapter in the Finishing School book about how to finish and just realized I could use that chapter to finish the Le Santucce book.

Anyway, maybe next time I’ll tell you all about my conversation with the Italian translator. It was pretty awesome. And then I’ll finish the book for real.

Cheers, see you next time (and no, I haven’t lost my mind again, I’m just trying out a kind of beatnik freeform style …)–ct