For the last two weeks I've been writing Concrete Winter lyrics in hotel rooms around Provincetown.
I live here. I'm not visiting.
My studio has been unusable between the heat and power issues, so every morning I've been packing up notebooks and finding somewhere else to work. Hopefully that changes today.
In those two weeks I've filled notebooks with four songs.
Maybe they're good. Maybe they're not.
Maybe they'll find a place in the world. Maybe they'll never leave the notebook.
I don't know.
What I do know is that they were hard won.
Provincetown is full of people right now. Every week new people arrive and every week they leave. Different faces. Different stories. Different lives passing through.
Meanwhile I'm sitting in hotel rooms trying to figure out a line, crossing it out, writing it again, staring out the window, going for a walk, coming back, and doing it all over.
I keep wondering how many other people in this town are doing the same thing.
How many playwrights are working on plays nobody has agreed to produce.
How many painters are working on canvases nobody has bought.
How many writers are filling notebooks nobody has read.
How many of us are sitting a block or two apart wondering if we're the only ones.
And how do we find each other?
I got called an asshole recently.
Maybe I am.
Or maybe accountability and professionalism matter more to me than they do to some people.
A business relationship didn't survive that difference.
There are a few relationships in my life that didn't survive.
There is less money than I'd like.
There is more uncertainty than I'd like.
And there are four new songs sitting in notebooks.
That's where things stand.
Tomorrow I'll probably get up and write another one.