I was having the best day yesterday — just the very best day. For a few reasons, but the primary ones:

1.) My girlfriend here in the Hinterlands is reading my novel, The Guitar Hero Goes Home, and she had texted me at 3am to tell me in vivid detail all the reasons why she was loving it.

I very rarely get any feedback at all on my work anymore. Even though it doesn’t keep me from writing, my writing life is basically like writing into a void now and it gets very, very lonely. So to have gotten that type of text in the middle of the night (I was awake) just shot my heart off to the moon.

Also….

2.) I got a royalty check from LULU yesterday, which is my primary home for self-publishing now after all the sabotage that Amazon put me through last year. And so that also made me feel really happy.

But then late in the day, as I was getting ready to leave work, I got on my phone to find something to listen to on the drive home and I saw the news that Mark Lanegan had died. It just threw me for a bad loop, gang.

I did not feel like getting out of bed this morning, but the cats needed to be fed and so on we go, right? But for now, I am going back to bed, to just be with a broken heart before I have to leave the house and go back into work. I will be back here to post the news again tomorrow.

I leave you with the song I am listening to right now — a song I listened to all during the Spring of 2020, when I was stuck in bed for several weeks, trying to get over C*VID.

I just love this song, gang — I relate to it on so many levels, I can’t possibly list all the reasons. I have posted it here before: Mark Lanegan, singing with his wife Shelley, “This Game of Love,” from his album Straight Songs of Sorrow, 2020.

Have a good day, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

This Game of Love

Don’t let me burn like this
Save me from the fire
I know the art of loneliness
I see straight down the wire
See straight down the wire
See straight down the wire

Free my soul of emptiness
I know the taste of sorrow
Tonight I am delirious
I live to play tomorrow
Live to play tomorrow
Live to play tomorrow
I live to play tomorrow

I came in to this town
No comfort or peace of mind
Just as the rain came down
I swear I don’t wanna lose this time

Gonna take my rightful place
In the sun high heaven above
Or there’ll be hell to pay
Am I gonna lose this game of love?

Now I lay me down to rest
Cold ground up against my back
Time and again I failed a test
As painful as a heart attack
As painful as a heart attack
As painful as a heart attack
As painful as a heart attack

Don’t make me burn like this
I know the art of loneliness
Free my soul of emptiness
Pull me from the fire

I stepped down off the train
Not looking to do no harm
Just book a room someplace
And hold devotion and warmth in between my arms

Devotion and warmth, devotion and warmth
Devotion and warmth in between my arms
But the to and the fro
The wrath and the sloth
The back and the forth took my world apart

Lord, I’ll take my place
In the sun high heaven above
Or there’ll be hell to pay
Am I gonna lose this game of love?

Am I gonna, gonna lose
Am I gonna lose this game of love?
Am I gonna lose
Am I gonna lose this game of love?

Am I gonna, gonna lose
Am I gonna lose this game of love?
Am I gonna lose
Am I gonna lose this game of love?

c – 2020 Mark Lanegan