Shouts From Down Under

Do you find older pieces you've written become friend-zoned?

You are excited and your mind is like one of those pressure cookers mum had for cooking chickens.
The words just flow out and you wonder how you do it, where they came from and why can't you think so clearly all the time, not just now.

Then you edit the piece a few (hundred) times and that's it. It's there, finished, at least as far as you're concerned. Yeah, you might get a few reviews on it, and change a few things that people point out are sort of stoopid, but eventually, you leave it alone. You've moved on perhaps.

After a while, you find (well, I do anyway) that this story or poem that was once at the centre of your thinking, the focal point of your concentration, has become, not dull, not bad, but just...friend zoned. That's the only word I can think of for it.
You aren't in love with it. At least, not any more. Perhaps there was a time when it held you, fascinated, impassioned, you had a crush, you were mesmerised by it, infatuated, as Michael in VSauce says, you had a feeling of Limerence. The work had you in it's claws, had you curled around it's literary little finger. You like liked it and the attention seemed to be mutual.

You know this to be the case, because your wife or whoever, accuses you of spending far to much attention on WdC, and says that all you ever talk about is WRITING, and asks why don't you the heck marry the flipping site.

But then it's finished, you go on to write other stuff, you think on other things, you've moved on from whatever experience in life, or reading matter, or etc that inspired that piece in the first place. Perhaps it was just a contest prompt.

Now, you just get a tired feeling when you read that piece.

Yes: Friend-zoned


Well, I'm not sure if literary works are in the same category, relationship-wise, but sometimes I wonder if it's really advisable to try to rekindle that old romance with something stale. Do we really want to work on it too much, because won't that change the essence of it, the thinking that we had when we wrote it is different now; we've moved on emotionally, and to muck about with it will ruin it.

We've had a lot of nostalgia last few days, with our family back together, for a few hours on some of the days here, at least.

One of the first record player songs I remember hearing, by Merle Kilgore. It's an interesting clip with the singer's explanation of why he wrote the song.
We had some 45 rpm singles and a few 33 rpm records of artists such as Jim Reeves - The Blizzard, John Williamson's Old Man Emu, The Seekers many hits of course, and others like Lonnie Donegan's My old man's a dustman.


{http://youtu.be/Y7GeZ3YmONw}
{http://youtu.be/H2fyFumisiU}

Yes, there's been a lot of yarning happening here about old times on the farm. When you are lucky enough to have parents, and have both of them still alive, then every time we are together like this, we wonder if it will be the last time. But then, life is never guaranteed for any of us I suppose.

My mum is older than dad by a few years, the same as my wife is older than me, so I was teasing her about being a "cougar".

She doesn't use her laptop computer anymore, and isn't on Facebook. She still reads but has to have Large Print, otherwise she "can't see a thing". She is too weak to do much most days except shuffle down to the clothes line, hang a couple of garments there, and look at the clouds towards the north; she'll comment if there's a storm, or if she spots a bushfire. Her eyesight is ok for long vision, not so good up close.

But, she knows what a "cougar' is.




Sparky

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