I have been trying to get to this blog post for, like, hours. I keep getting distracted. By weird stuff.

You know how your mind will just follow all these weird thought-currents and you don’t even realize you’re doing it? And you’re sort of puttering, too? And everything’s getting to be just a big sort of tangled up ball of thought-strings as you’re puttering far from your computer??

Yes, that’s me. Almost always, frankly — but this morning it seems to be more pronounced. Because I’m finally just sitting down to blog, one and a half hours later than I usually do, and I haven’t actually done anything different today.

I woke up at 5am — and this is truly weird for me — thinking about the Pink Floyd song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”

I do not care for Pink Floyd.  And the only song of theirs that I actually ever liked was “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” But I think it could have been greatly enhanced by being 3 minutes long instead of over thirteen minutes long…. but that’s just me. (Yes, I miss the entire point of Pink Floyd’s music. I’m okay with that, though.)

To me, Pink Floyd was always “boys music.” All the boys loved Pink Floyd, but I didn’t know a single girl who owned a Pink Floyd record (including me).

But I laid there in the dark, wondering why I was singing “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” immediately upon awakening. I hadn’t thought of that song in probably 47 years. (Actually, I think that means I hadn’t thought of the song until well before it was written.) Still. Long time.

Then I realized, well, I was in the mental hospital the first time I heard that song. Maybe that’s why I was thinking about it. I googled the lyrics and thought, “Well, it is a cool song so that’s probably why I liked it. Still, it’s way too long….”

And then I remembered that a really, really long-time girlfriend of mine, from my wee bonny girlhood in Cleveland, dated David Gilmour briefly. They met in an airport, during some sort of bad-weather layover.  Boston, I think. This was somewhere in the 1980s. I think. I can’t remember. But she was/is really beautiful. At that point in her life, she was a very successful fashion designer for Pierre Cardin in NYC. She got me my first job in NYC, actually, so I was able to move there and have a job waiting for me — I was a receptionist for a really successful menswear designer. (Not Pierre Cardin.) And I worked in the Empire State Building and I sat at a big desk behind big glass doors with gold lettering on them. And I was fresh from Ohio, mind you. Right off the boat, as it were (although I arrived in an airplane…)

In those days, I have to keep stressing that we didn’t even have something like MTV yet — it wasn’t even close to existing. The world was still an enormous place — it got much smaller and much more global with cable TV. And especially with MTV.

It used to take forever for current fashions to reach the Midwest because we had no real frame of reference for information to travel quickly. Ohio was always a couple years behind the fashions of either coast. And NYC, in particular, was intensely haute couture.  So there I sat, behind those huge glass doors, at that big desk, at a hugely successful fashion design company, in my Ohio dresses that were outdated by a couple of years.

I couldn’t afford to buy any new clothes yet because NYC was incredibly expensive. It was hard on me, emotionally, because I was only 20 and, you know, those things like “what you wear” matter a lot when you’re 20.

Well, I quickly learned everything about the fashion designing business and I thought it was super cut-throat and mean and diabolical and fake and just awful. And was I terrible at my job. Just abysmal. They fired me after 6 months, but I hated that job and that world and I was super excited to get fired, so, you know, “don’t cry for me, Argentina,” or anything.

However. I think David Gilmour was a bit of a heavy imbiber/recreational drug-sort-of user back then, and so my girlfriend didn’t really hit it off with him too well and stopped seeing him pretty much right away.

But I do find it exceedingly interesting that his current wife, Polly, is a dead ringer for how my girlfriend looked. It’s uncanny, really — how similar they look.

None of this is leading to anything, though, because this is just an example of all the strange stuff going on in my head this morning. And I still have no clue why I was singing that song when I woke up.

And I did fall back to sleep, btw. And had a couple of those sort of astral projection type dreams. I don’t usually have those. But when I do, I only astrally project within my house. I don’t travel anywhere else. So that’s weird, right? Why go to all this trouble to leave your body and then just go sit at your kitchen table? You can (and do) do this while you’re awake…

So that’s a big question mark, too, this morning: Why on Earth do I do the things I do?

Well, who knows. So.

The director of Tell My Bones is set to call here momentarily, to begin the discussions for getting the table read in NYC underway. So that’s exciting, but it’s also making my tummy a little nervous. I’m so glad I don’t have to cast that thing. Seriously. It makes me a little anxious. Let’s just do some sort of creative visualization (meaning: right now, you & me) that everyone who’s incredibly and astoundingly talented will just show up and be there. And then all I have to do is show up and be there, too.

You know, strategies like that have actually worked well for me. So I’m gonna stick with it.

Meanwhile. I’m gonna get moving here!! It’s been such a weird morning. But thanks for visiting. I hope Monday is all you’re hoping it will be and then some! I’m leaving you with my theme song! I think they’re gonna play this when they bury me (or enshrine me or something like that)… All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

“Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”

It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange
When I try to explain how I feel
That I still need your love after all that I’ve done

You won’t believe me
All you will see is a girl you once knew
Although she’s dressed up to the nines
At sixes and sevens with you

I had to let it happen, I had to change
Couldn’t stay all my life down at heel
Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun

So I chose freedom
Running around, trying everything new
But nothing impressed me at all
I never expected it to

Don’t cry for me Argentina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance

And as for fortune, and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions
They are not the solutions they promised to be
The answer was here all the time
I love you and hope you love me

Don’t cry for me Argentina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance

c – 1976  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice