Isolation 2020/Unemployment/Projects/Live Streaming/etc

What day is it? If all you folks are like me you’ve stopped paying attention to what day it is and become distracted with washing your hands, with making sure you’ve got a mask in your pocket every time you go out the front door, with silently taking stock of what’s on the shelves and in the freezer and many other mundane and ordinary activities. These have become the highlights of the day. Here at home, the late afternoon/early evening meal has become more of a focus than it used to be, what with all the new recipes I’ve been collecting off the number of websites that send me recipes everyday. At this point I think I have 600+ items to choose from in my “Recipes” folder. I don’t know when I think I’ll eat all this stuff, but it fills time, sparks my interest which is a good thing.

There have been so many days the last two months that bled together into one gray, windy, rainy, chilly endurance contest after the next that I stopped keeping track of even what time it was unless I had a lesson or two to give online. Online. Everything is online. Everybody that I know is doing online lessons and workshops, concerts, clinics, whatever they can dream up. Some have gone to doing virtual festivals and mulit-player “camps” with 3-4 people online at a time. I’ve been doing weekly concerts myself and have enjoyed the time to play. I’ve been needing the drive to open the case and play, to have a direction because mostly anything involving music has been falling off my calendar and disappearing into the ozone for the past 3 months. As of now I still have work in September (maybe) but there’s no guarantee that is safe either. Most of the work I have been doing is filling out unemployment forms, grant applications, calling and writing people who are in charge of various financial assistance organizations, mostly to no avail. “Dear Applicant, blah, blah, blah,…. the unforeseen hardships that COVID-19 has placed on artists,….. blah, blah blah,….. we have thousands of requests but were only able to assist the first 550 ……. blah, blah, blah,….. we unfortunately have run out of funds at this time. Please do not respond to this letter”. And so it goes and goes.

As of this writing the state of Tennessee employment/unemployment office website is supposedly undergoing a massive redesign and update because it has already been proven that it was an archaic piece of junk and plainly did/does not cater to a very large slice of the workforce, those being the self-employed and 1099 workers. At this point after very much effort and frustration by 100,000’s of people in Tennessee alone the state has finally decided to grant a lot of us the minimum ( $120 a week) to just give them a break apparently and appease the masses until they can do better. Hell, I’m not even sure anybody who has the power to do anything has any intention of ‘doing better’. I get the feeling that what actually is happening is that we are all being told just enough positive news, real or otherwise, to keep us from getting out of hand and just waiting for all this to blow over. And truthfully, I have read so many articles and reports involving just about every kind of doctor and politician you can think of that I can’t say that I believe much of anything people are saying at this point. It appears that the whole COVID thing is way more convoluted ‘event’ than it appears on the surface. I can’t help but feeling that there is way more to this whole worldwide situation than the way it is being portrayed. Paranoid? Maybe. But mostly I am a true skeptic at this point. I used to believe nearly everything I was told by everybody, I trusted and trusted and now that has ended. I trust very few anymore. I really miss feeling like I can rely on other people and their words.

I’ve started hearing a number of folks talking about “screen fatigue”. I must say I’m right there with ‘em. The computer is usually on here both upstairs and down, cell phones blazing wherever the humans are. I have come to really despise the sound of iPhone speakers. REALLY. They’ve done a great job figuring out how to make those little speakers audible wherever you are. The need for income is being met though. I have been surprised at how much can actually be made online and as has been mentioned by yours truly before, things ain’t going back to the way they were. The internet is where the action is. I have been getting notices daily from friends who are doing concerts online. If watching live music is a person’s delight, then there is no shortage of fuel for your passion. I started out working a set every Sunday about a month ago and have decided to drop back to every other week and to a shorter live feed. Although I do love to play I think that folks are probably getting somewhat burned out. I don’t understand how some guys do a daily workshop or jam. Even at the rate I’m working I find myself glazing over after a while and just sit here staring at the screen thinking about something else entirely or seems like I’m thinking about nothing at all, merely zoned out. Either that or looking out the window at the birds on the feeders. I don’t see how they do daily events. It’s got to be adding up to burnout. Plus, it’s hard to keep ideas coming, finding new and fresh material to play or talk about. The hardest part is the part where there is no feedback, just me sitting talking to a screen imagining there are hundreds or thousands of people (hey, might as well be optimistic. If you ask for crumbs that’s all you’ll get) who are watching and interested in what I’m doing. It gets easier but it’s still strange.

I’m still trying to get the Monroe project out. The latest from the lawyer is that maybe we can reach an agreement with the supposed owner of the tunes (who say they don’t own them) that they will not sue me if I go ahead and release the project. It’s just been a complete ass-backwards affair from square one. The only part where there has been no problem is the actual recording of the tunes. Mike Bub, Shad Cobb, Russ Carson, Michael Cleveland, Laura Orshaw and Jeremy Stephens came in and nailed it in a day and a half and went home. That was last mid-August. I got video from Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill to help promote the recording. Video done, artwork/graphics finished. Put together a GoFundMe page to recoup the money I spent (that was 6 months ago. In the meantime GoFundMe has deactivated my account without my permission and lost all my graphic content, all artwork, links, videos, etc. Now I find out that the couple weeks work I put in to build the campaign is no longer a valid format because they have changed their whole layout. Thanks. I’ll be going somewhere else). Then hit a brick wall. Nobody wants to claim these tunes so that I can buy licenses to put them out. I have a project of my own tunes planned that I’d like to get started and finished this year. At least that was the plan. But it is very doubtful that will happen now. I have to get the Monroe thing out so I can finally stop thinking about it. I’ll get to my project soon enough I suppose. In the meantime I’ll just keep writing tunes. I also have a publishing project to do, that of all the Monroe transcriptions I’ve got finished. I have close to all the recorded work Bill did transcribed at this point but I’ll need to keep editing and rewriting until I get all of them looking the same. This has been an ongoing practice for the last ten years and I have finally found myself a look and style that I am satisfied with so I’ll need to keep after the rewrites. Plus, I can hear what is going on better and need to make the corrections.

This month I am getting something done about my hands. Wear and tear is taking its toll and after seeing a half-dozen different types of specialists I am going with carpal tunnel surgery. It seems the best option for a permanent fix or at least for as long as I can reasonably assume I can continue to play. I suppose now that there isn’t a lot going on on the books now is the time to get it done. I am naturally going back and forth about it but my reasoning is sort of like the old joke about a man who is being asked why he doesn’t get his leaky roof fixed. His reply is “when it’s raining I can’t fix it and when it’s not raining it don’t leak” (which reminds me, I need to replace the roof on the shed but it won’t stop raining long enough). When I don’t play mandolins my hands don’t get numb and I don’t think about it and when I do…well, you know the rest. So it’s time to take the bull by the horns and get everything straightened out so I can feed myself once the jobs come back.

I hope that you folks find some amusement or something to think about here in this informal blog. I don’t do it regularly now that there are not many gigs to talk about, no travel to share. I’m dangerously close at times of getting too personal and dug in on the opinionated and somber front so I have to back off. I don’t want this blog to reflect my own demons and fears so much. I feel that I would be doing you a disservice and plus I just don’t think it’s dignified to do such. I promise to keep making efforts to not let you down. We all need each other to make this life worthwhile. Is it too early to take a nap? Seems like it’s only been a couple hours since I got up. Looks like the sun has come out. Maybe I should put on my boots and go outside for a while and get some vitamin D. Take care of yourselves.

Life is good yet. MC