Scott Fagan's Mem.wa?

Introduction..P. 1
Book 3. Chapter One.
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Introduction
August 16, 2009
My name is Scott Fagan, in ten days I’ll be sixty-four. It’s time to get on this so..I’m getting’ on it. In fairness, I think I ought to tell you right now, that this mem.wa? is GA (General Audiences) (or as GA as I can make it) I am writing it with the idea, indeed the hope, that my Daughters and Grand Daughters (and Sons and Grand Sons too) will someday read it. I have avoided including any lurid hot panting and dribbling or things of a titillating procreative nature. To get an eye-popping look at that stuff you will have to see my upcoming tell all, “The Secret and Salacious Adventures of Don Wha?.n.

This mem.wa? is (or ought to be) in roughly three parts,
1. The warm up, or Prelude.
2. At the Plate, or “Inderlude” and
3. Afterlude or ‘in der Postulude”..or
Book 1. Book 2. and Book 3.
I know what I mean even if you don’t, but you will before it’s all over.

Further, we (I say we because there are people backstage urging me to “git im Scottie” who are an essential part of this activity) are working or intending to work in a newish medium that I like to call a Blogitto or a Blogette, or somedays even the blasted Blogummy, but probably best of all, I like to call “my cheap dimestore virtue-paper novellito with magical underlinings that make it ok for the reader to be “hearing things” while shum (that’s new speak for she and him) is reading”.

For example (tho we can’t afford to demonstrate it here) one may be reading some horrific passage (and believe me there will be a few, especially for those folks who are sticklers for proper or even acceptable grammer) when the hair may begin to rise and shum is suddenly stricken with a panic attack and flings the medium down upon the cobblestones while running lejardo-ly out of the room (see what I mean?) and then weeks later may realize that there was spooky music underscoreing the misuse of a dangling parasail or handful of semi psycho grammaticals. But like I said, don’t worry about that stuff because with my operating capital, aka “my little budgie”, we can’t afford to do it..yet

I’d have to whistle the spooky notes and believe me, it doesn’t have the same effect. (we know, we tried) BUT what we may be able to do, is something that I’d wished for, in every dark and stormy hour between midnight and morning of my formative years spent reading Micky Spillaine and Shell Scott.
That would be the ability to also”hear” the song being referred to or referenced in the literary text. Can you imagine? “Through the stinkin’ smokey haze in Salingers stinkin’ swill shop, I could see the boozy old broad in the bluevelvet dress standing on the table and starting her bump and grind. She was grunting and moaning as she moved to a slow (¾ time with sections in 5/8 and 9/13th time) blues. My buddy the rogue cop, Captain Gunn grabbed my arm and said “Good Lord Mike, that’s your Mother!”)

Yeah, yeah, I know we’ve been able to poke a chicken and hear ‘im squeek for years in children’s books, but this is big time, important grown-up stuff.
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I’m thinking that it may be important also to note that I am writing from a prospective (not to mention a plane) other than the one that most Americans (and Canadians) and I guess just about any old white folks from anywhere, are used to. Particularly where color, what it means, the roles that it plays, music, customs, language, rice and beans and points of viewing the universe (front and back) are concerned.
Please allow that there may be things other than have hitherto or heretofore met your eye, and that you may meet and greet, some of them here “in de mem.wa?” I do hope that you will have fun and enjoy the experience and the book/s. Thank you for reading it/them..

So let’s see.. let’s start with…
BOOK 3.
Chapter One..Yep!
I am living rough. Writing in St. Thomas, beginning in mid August 2009, in a 12 by 10 concrete block room, in a house owned by my good friend “Tutsie”, I am staying here while recording my new musical “The Virgin Islands Songs”.
There is a fan (no not that kind, an electric one) on the wall facing me (just above and to the left of the lamp with the bare light bulb almost directly in front of me, which is just above and to the left of the lap top, which is just to the right of almost directly in front of me. What is directly in front of me is a wall sitting mosquito the size of a fruit bat. But believe it or not, they don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.
I can almost hear the light bulb sizzling the hot humid air, I figger’ we’re probably no more than two degrees below the boiling point. The electric fan is swirling the hot air around a bit, otherwise it would be boiling and boiling hot air swirling around your head is almost intolerable, even for me.

I say “even for me” because where physical comfort is concerned, I am fairly tough, and take some pride in my ability to “do without”.
Others might say (females primarily, and they say it often ) that I’m too willing to “settle for less” but honestly, I don’t even grok the concept.
It may be that you will come to recognize this (as females primarily, often do) as one of a number of curious blind spots that I possess. Things that you/they will see, but I won’t/don’t..

It’s 20 to eight on a Sunday morning and I’ve been awake and thinking since 6:30 am.
Thinking about (it seems) some of everything under the sun, and ruminating on the idea that my genetic line’s electric animation juice seems to run out between 74 and 76 years of age. Will it for me? I sincerely hope not because however difficult it may be, I love being alive.

In any case, it is surely time for me to try and change my living circumstances as a man and as an artist. What the heck does that really mean? you might ask.
As an hombre, it means improving my ability to respond financially to the physical and material needs of my family (yes, ok, and my self).
As an artist it means the ability to afford the tools to represent my work well (good microphones, instruments, amps, computers and recording equipment) the working capital for quality productions and world class promotion.
The general wherewithal to write, play and sing successfully at the level that my potential and ability would allow.

I don’t believe that art ought to be a competition pitting one sensitive human being (artist) against another sensitive human being (artist) for the amusement of a desensitized public and the obscene profits of corporate sponsors,
I think that music (and every other art) is naturally above and ought to stay above that kind of vulgar exploitation.
Oops there, I’ve done it again. That’s the kind of think/talk that contributed to my present difficult circumstances in the first place…(Oh I do hope this kind of talk is what they mean by “git’ em Scottie!”) (Although I’m kinda “plumb tuckered out” with fightin’ words)

I actually applied the “Hey Scott, so what do you see yourself doing for the next five and ten years question” and even after forty five years before the mast, having a hit record and singing it all aver the place, was of course the first ting’ that popped up.
However, as I am presently right in the middle of recording a musical and I have all these other projects lined up waiting to be recorded (and interestingly, no way to record them) and still others jumping up and down on me brains wanting to be written..how the heck do I think I am going to manage all of that?
Then, I’ve got to factor in the fact that I have never been able to sing every night of the week without going hoarse and losing my voice (but don’t forget, I hasten to remind my self, that’s from doing three or four hour long sets, full of maximo screeching an yowling) and further remind my self that perhaps if I behaved and sang like a blasted gentleman, with a nice romantic song for a hit record. I probably wouldn’t have to sing sixty or seventy five scratchity yowlers to find one the boss recognized sufficiantly well to pay me for) however, I’ve calculated that if I scheduled my performances for lets see..Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, I could do it. We are gonna see..