Need any more betas, deb?

Yep! Sending...

OK. Will try to get to as soon as I finish a complete rewrite of the Lucy synopsis based on suggestions from writers group tonight. (Want to see that, once it's done?)

Of course. And there's no rush on mine; I'm likely going to get another big chunk done tomorrow, and my gut tells me this one is flowing very smoothly.

Which is amazing, since my brain is tapioca and I fel very vague and dithery.

Wow, you guys. I started copying the sentences I liked best, but pretty soon there were too many to post. I love catching up in this thread.

Will I ever understand exactly what I'm missing out on?

I don't speak Music. I have no better way to explain my lack of ability to, well, communicate with it. Maybe that's why reading this topic is so fascinating for me. I know that there are things that I don't hear, that there are things that are right there, and I just can't grasp - just like looking at a page covered with letters of a foreign language that other people can read, the meaning is there, the layers, the subtleties, the rich field of possibilities, but I just don't speak that language. But I keep hoping I'll one day learn.

I'm likely going to get another big chunk done tomorrow, and my gut tells me this one is flowing very smoothly

deb, so, later, count me in?

Deb, I'll be happy to look at the story the next time you send it 'round.

(adding Nilly and Anne to beta list)

Nilly, which email addy is best for you?

I don't speak Music. I have no better way to explain my lack of ability to, well, communicate with it.

You're in some very good company there, if the school of thought that believes Shakespeare was completely tonedeaf is correct. But music is also about the lyrics, sometimes; do you do poetry?

Also, I don't speak music, either - I can't read a note. I just get naked and roll around in it. Alternately, it serves as a nice proxy for the booze I don't like; makes me very drunk.

This is pretty sentimental from me.
Janis’ Drabble
I can’t believe I’m older than you are now, in terms of not being in the 27 club. I could’ve been, the “kosmic blues” were rough on me, too, when I was 27. I was not in a position to wait for heroin, or even alcohol then, and now I can’t imagine having a talent like yours and wanting to. Sadly, I would still rather be like you than like me. I’m taking too long to get started, and you finished too fast. Maybe it’s one or the other, sometimes.
When I was a kid, I used to wonder what you were so pissed off about. I think I might understand now. Kids don’t really get rage and it took me a while, the growing-up thing.(I hate to tell you how old I was before I got that you could read “Down on Me” two ways. Too old.) Your voice still sounds really alive. I think you’d get a smile listening to me mangle “Piece of My Heart” because I’m from Arizona and I think we have our soul systemically extracted. Maybe it was Goldwater. That was before my time.

Oh, man. erika just broke me in half.

My friend Pigpen (Rod McKernan) from the Dead is the person who taught Janis how to drink Southern Comfort. He died of liver disease. No surprise.

Music Drabble I

The Everly Brothers and Elvis were on the radio and the Beatles were on the way. Two girls sat in the basement next to the faux antique hi-fi, carefully placing the tone arm back again and again until they had memorized each song. They sang along: "It takes a worried man," "I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar," giggling at the "damn" and playing acoustic air guitar. Two girls obsessed with the Kingston Trio, while their friends practiced the Twist.

I was out of step with time and fashion, for the first time perhaps, but not the last.