Several years ago, I built my web site from scratch using word processing programs that allowed html. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it so readers could leave comments. 

Since one of my main interests in life is conversation and colleagiality, and I have been living for years in a town where I can’t seem to find much of either, I thought that converting to a template designed web site would at least allow for the possibility of some sorts of interchange. This inevitably restricted my ability to design my site. Frustrating but necessary if I wanted to add the comment dealy.

In practice this has ended up more as a conduit for conversations with my family and friends scattered all over the world.  This way they can keep track of me (read lurk) without having to actually deal with me, heh.

There have been moments of exchange with people I have met online. One time, the Irish author Ken Bruen stopped by (I’d link you in so you could see but I’m locked out of those posts). More usually I reach out to others via their web sites. Sometimes they reach back.

Sir Monocle has been a valuable cyber colleague for me. Not sure how we connected but now we regularly comment on each others blogs. 

But the dang wordpress template has been clunky and buggy for me. [Post Blog Note: as I was trying to load this particular blog and save it and preview it, suddenly I couldn’t get anything from jupiterjenkins.com/blog2/wp-admin/ to load. I had to restart the computer to get it to work. Sheesh. Of course I’m not absolutely sure if wordpress is responsible, since everything seems sort of like magic to someone of my ignorance.]

This is my sixth post on a redirected site. Another thing that interests me about having a web site is putting up my compositions and recordings. On the previous website that locked me out, I had a page of links to my compositions: recordings, pdfs of the notation and what not. Now due to the redirect, all of that stuff has to be re-worked and put on this new site.  Looking at a cached version online I count 61 links and files. Yikes. 

I do wonder if it’s worth it.

Hello.
Is there anybody in there? 
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home? 

from PInk Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”

And I seem to be at an ebb in mental energy. Yesterday I had the day off and spent most of the day reading, practicing piano and brooding. When I wasn’t reading or practicing, I felt kind of grumpy.

 When I get in this mood I mostly cling to my own love of music and ideas.  

Probably as a result of losing perspective, it seems to me that I run across fewer and fewer people interested in words and music the way I am. 

This past Sunday I performed two cool pieces by Bach on the organ. It was hard not see their impact on the people in the room with them as negligible. 

So I guess I just need a bit of time to gather my own mental reserves and energy to rebuild my web site and recapture my groove. 

I have to get a promo pic to local coffee house, LemonJellos, this week. I haven’t been able to arouse much of my own motivation around the upcoming gig there, short of thinking it would be cool to do some Messiaen. I haven’t talked to any musicians about playing with me or even thought much about what tunes to do. My brain just stops when I try to think about it. 

I think I’m locked out of my brain as well as my old web site.