"Yesterday, all my troubles..."

A FEW for FRIDAY

1. Monday
In an attempt to organize the random verses I've been creating for "A Place I Don't Belong," I sat down with a note pad and wrote them in the linear order as I see them in this graphic-novel magazine's layout. Only just from memory.

I think that resulted in a completely new first verse.

Some of the other verses were complete as I could remember them word for word like any good song lyrics. Other entries only had the lines I could remember. Some verses only had a place holder. I know I created a verse for what happens at this point of the story, only I don't remember a word! I'll make an effort to track down those random envelope backs and scrap pieces of paper and fill them into this one 'master document' -- this lined note pad.

I'm sporadically trying to read two books while doing all this. A recipe for disaster in itself. One of these books is Stephen King's On Writing. I'm not very far into it. Not even to the "writing half" of it. One thing for sure, I don't expect to find anything as chaotic as the writing process I just described.

2. Tuesday
I finished my commission piece! Was rather pleased about the process and all even though it was quite a bit of a struggle to "get started." I don't know why that is.

I can't include the piece here, just yet. Gotta wait until the 'surprise' is given. It's a 'thank you card' to soldier who's just returned from Afghanistan. He's riding a magic carpet that he purchased while over there and commenting on how this advantage point is much better than a tree stand. This is making his 'targets' -- a deer and a turkey -- a bit nervous.

Bet you can't wait to see it?

3. Thursday
Maybe I get tired of hanging up monthly posters. Or missing "new poster due" deadlines.

"Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away..."

FIVE for FRIDAY

1. Monday
A week ago or so, I posted this "last spread." The copy was lorem ipsum FPO stuff, so I needed something to go there and I decided I would write more verses for this song as a book. On Monday, I wrote what I thought would be a great last verse. Then I changed. Now, it's a great last verse.

2. Tuesday
I once wrote a line for a song that went like this:
"Sometimes I think
In congested traffic
With cellphones and harmonicas
Life ain't so tragic."
I find I think A LOT in congested traffic. Tuesday was no exception. I thought up a new verse on my way back to work from a press check about "what happened to Billie the nightclub singer."

3. Wednesday
Along with a number of other tunes, Sonia, Jim -- our new drummer, Tony -- and I played a funky version of the original (three-verse) A Place I don't Belong

4. Thursday
I put on a shirt I hadn't worn since last Thursday. I found an envelope in the pocket. Some bit a junk mail. But there was something scribbled on the back. It was a verse I had written about "the red Cadillac parked outside the packy."

5. Friday
Today is Salvador Dali's 108th birthday-anniversary. I'm going to do my best to be surreal!

"Say the WORD and be like me!"

NOW, I'm truly in A Place I Don't Belong!
Or maybe it's not that bad.

After my decision to add more lyrics I found myself with this desire to create something more magazine-like. And that needed text.

See. Here's what I shared the other day. It's another verse. It's laid out like headline text on a magazine spread. It needs body text.

So, I added it. Here in prose. But later that day, I found myself writing more but this time in the rhymed meter of the original song. I'll need to decide if I'll mix them or just write it all in rhyme. If I go with the latter, Dylan truly would be proud. In doing so, I would have taken a three verse song and quadrupled it.

"As I write this letter..."

A Place I Don't Belong is my latest graphic-novel magazine project. You may already know this. It includes the same nine characters I used in my first project, "Ain't gonna hang no pixel." You may already know that, as well. In PIXEL, the story is about two people -- the artist and the girl who works at the frame shop. The included 'celebrities' -- Bob Dylan, Emily Dickinson, Jack Kerouac, Paul McCartney, Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allan Poe, Billie Holiday, Bette Davis and Alfred Hitchcock -- illustrate analogies like "I stood as still as Kerouac," or references like (Paul McCartney illustrating)"a Beatles' song" or 'themselves' as Bob Dylan does as the 'inspiration' behind the artist's decision to "stop painting with paint."

In PLACE, these nine characters play roles in my script. And my script is based on the lyrics of an original song with the same title.

You may already know that.

This song has three verses.

My problem has been in creating the "story" that isn't covered in these lyrics. I saw it as visual story-telling challenge. But that challenge has become quite daunting. On the way into work yesterday, I came up with a solution.

I think Bob Dylan would be proud!

MORE lyrics!

Yes, so I set out at lunchtime to create another verse (I think I will need at least three more in total). This verse takes Jack and Norma from the coffee shop to the nightclub where they hear Billie and her band. I think the verse came out quite nice. It inspired this quick spread design.

"Tell Me What YOU See?"

every picture tells a story -- don't it?

The STORY goes like this....
I suppose I could have unpacked the original art—the colored-pencil illustration of Bob Dylan, aptly titled: "A TRAIN TO CRY"—unpacked it from the box ready to be sent to the Santa Fe gallery (before the 'shipping cost' funds ran dry). I could have done that. And hung that picture like I hung the ink drawing of JACK KEROUAC and the batik painting of BILLIE HOLIDAY in the previous months. But I wanted to do something different this time. Hang something that might make the customers of the Northfield Coffee and Books shop pause and say "what's that?" It looks like a bulletin board from the artist's studio. It looks like a "process revealed." Some step-by-steps. Or at least a progression of what may have come first. You all viewed the "somewhat comical" step-by-step I posted in a previous blog. That's included. But so is a CD image of the album cover art for BLONDE ON BLONDE. And there's even a ticket to the 1997 Bob Dylan concert at Northampton's John M. Greene Hall (that had only to do with the inspiration not the actual art itself). There's the model train that posed for the original illustration. The cover and a page from my self-published magazine: "Ain't gonna hang no pixel." Yes, I wanted something different.

And that's my story...