RE: Rolling Blackouts

I realize in retrospect that my last post, although it made perfect sense to me, may have been slightly confusing without some context.

It was in fact a record review of sorts of the album Rolling Blackouts by Brighton, UK band The Go! Team.  However, I’m a little tired of/uninterested in writing traditional record reviews (see A Change in Focus), so instead I opted for a sort of extreme-reader-response criticism/fan fiction type of record review. I hope to do more such non-traditional record reviews in the future because they are a lot more fun for me than regular record reviews.  Besides, you can find good regular reviews all over the place, so why do I need to bother with them, too?

I also would like to state for the record that Rolling Blackouts isn’t anything like my favorite album of 2011 or anything; it’s just a record I had a quick desire to write about in this method.  I hope to add more “reviews” to the site, including those written about albums that actually are my most favorites, but we know I have a poor track record of providing steady content and publishing all the things I intend to publish. So, I still have to add this disclaimer about Rolling Blackouts in case I never getting around to posting about any other albums and in their absence it appears as if it is my ultimate all-time-favorite album because it’s the only one I’ve written and published about.

That is all.  Thank you for your time.  We now return to our regular Froz-T-Freez programming, still in progress.

A Change in Focus

A few weeks ago I had a realization: I haven’t been writing. To most people, this probably does not sound like a bad thing. But I’ve always felt like I have a talent for writing and a potential to do good things with it, and not following through on that is a kind of self-betrayal. This knowledge of my failure to write is always in the back of my mind, but my new realization/kick-in-the-pants came in part as I attended the BYU Symposium on Books for Young Readers and gained knowledge from the fabulous authors and illustrators that spoke there. Then, that Sunday in church the cognizance of my dereliction was again brought forward when my Primary co-teacher in our class of 10-11-year-old boys gave this lesson. The time had come to think seriously about writing again, and develop a plan.

As an undergraduate in college, I was somewhat sure that I would go forward to obtain an MFA and PhD in Creative Writing, and become a poet and college professor on some fine campus somewhere. Although I did well in creative writing in college, after graduating I failed to follow through on this goal. I didn’t make the networking connections I needed to make, and I didn’t say the right things politically that I needed to say, and I didn’t apply to enough schools, but far more essentially, I failed to follow through and continue writing poetry after graduation.

Later, while working as a substitute teacher in public education, I wrote myself halfway through a novel meant for middle grade readers, became frustrated and unsure of where I was going with it, and put it aside. I stopped writing again. In intervening years I’ve made a couple of abortive, guilt-ridden attempts to participate in NaNoWriMo that led only to stress and failure.

But I discovered blogging. I never was that great at it, from a standpoint of consistency, popularity, or monetization, but I did it occasionally. A couple of my blogs have come and gone before the establishment of this site, Josh’s Froz-T-Freez. One of my reasons for having this site is to provide myself a motivator to continue writing as well as a venue to share that writing. As it turns out, it only sort of works to these purposes. Although I don’t post regularly on this site (and although I do occasionally make these grand bogus claims that I am finally going to commence doing so), I still think about what I might post on here or hope to post on here a great deal. It takes up a significant piece of my mental life, even if it never converts to actual posts. My mind is filled with albums I feel I need to review, restaurants I want to visit or visit again and write about, mixtapes I want to put together, pictures to take, random ideas I would like to explore through essays, etc. All of this stuff, even if it’s only half-baked, half-finished, and never posted, still takes up a lot of time. It is also crippling in its failed ambition. Self-expectations that my site be filled with reviews that are thorough and comprehensive have prevented me from even posting so much as a list of my so-far-favorite albums of 2011. My idea of what would constitute a “written blog post” has become in my mind somewhat overblown and unwieldy to do on a regular basis, and because of that high expectation I rarely follow through.

As I considered my desires to write and my failures to do so, I began to question the amount of mental energy I devote to this oft-times derelict site, and to social media in general. If I truly think about my aspirations in writing they have little to do with the content of this site. I have the aforementioned half-finished novel that I set aside four or five years ago, ideas for other novels, and a desire to try writing picture books and maybe get back into writing poetry, which I haven’t done for years but used to love the most. I’d maybe like to try my hand at some well-crafted personal essays. These are far different projects than writing lots of reviews, regardless of whether I am reviewing drive-ins, middle grade children’s novels, or rock albums that I like. There are plenty of people out there writing book and album reviews, most of them better at it and/or more successful or persistent at it than me. My true aspirations are not necessarily to become a great record reviewer, but to write some things that no one else in the world would write.

Writing regularly requires dedication and planning, so I recognized that I needed to refocus and re-prioritize some areas in my life, and let some things go that are less important to me. So in my mind I tried on the idea of killing this site and pulling away from social media in general. I told my wife that I might do it, so as to instead make a plan to devote consistent time every day to this other writing I have been neglecting – the extended, laborious process of writing novels, stories and poems that must occur off the grid. Unlike writing on a blog, this writing has no easy payoff from hitting the “publish” button, sometimes receiving one or two comments from family or other nice people. Instead it is a commitment to work in total darkness and obscurity for months and years, only then to undertake the stressful endeavor of convincing someone to read and hopefully buy and publish your manuscript. Scary.

But the day after I had this discussion and declared I might unplug, I went bonkers on Twitter. I wrote mini-drafts of record reviews. I made threats that I would blow up the Internet if I could not figure out a way to publish my every idle thought easily, stylishly, instantaneously, and simultaneously to all the various social media networks in current or future usage. I thought of all the other intended items I had yet to post on this site. I did not dig out my old novel. I did not write a poem. And furthermore I didn’t feel that badly about it.

My conclusion from this experience of the past week or so is that I’m definitely not ready to give up on social media, and particularly on this site. I’m just finally ready to simplify it and streamline it in my own mind, so that I can share the things I would like to share easily without a lot of pressure or expectations for myself, writing-wise. I will devote most of my writing energies to those other types of writings, and leave this as a casual sharing of interests when I have time.

For example, it turns out I don’t need to feel bad that I never wrote that exhaustive and now hopelessly untimely review of the Springville Art Museum’s Spring Salon that I had intended to write; I can simply throw up a picture from the show every now again with a quick shout-out to the artist, and that will probably be more fun and interesting for everyone anyway. I don’t need to write an exhaustive review of every restaurant I like – I can just throw up a picture or two and write a simple paragraph or sentence highlighting the place. “If you’re interested you go try it yourself.” Basically what I am saying is that the Froz-T-Freez is going into more of a curation mode. There may still be longer written pieces from time to time, but this will now morph into a place for me to quickly highlight and share things I like and that I think other people might benefit from.

War

Henri Rousseau (French, 1844-1910). War: The Ride of Discord (La Guerre: La chevauchée de la Discorde), 1894. Oil on Canvas. 1.14 x 1.95 m. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Some day I am going to write a novel based on this painting.

(This is another one that I saw at the Musée d’Orsay’s travelling post-impressionism exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, California.)

“La guerre ; elle passe effrayante laissant partout le désespoir, les pleurs, la ruine.”

Picture Book Marathon

I’ve never written a picture book before, but I always thought I would try it one day. Well, it turns out that one day will come very soon, and for 28 days in a row, starting February 1. I recently happened upon the Picture Book Marathon, and after a five second perusal of the site I rashly signed up to give it a go. The Picture Book Marathon appears to have been started by two people of my own home town of Salt Lake City, which I think is special. The idea is that participants will write the text of one picture book every day for the month of February. The project is clearly inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but thankfully they’ve ditched a lot of the anal retentiveness of that competition (the obsessive word counts, the emphasis on “finishing,” the need to actually work on the same story every day, all that silly stuff). Novelists may need that sort of thing, but we picture book authors and illustrators are a much more fun, laid back kind of crowd.

I’ve tried NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a couple of times, and each time I have prematurely ended it 1.5 to 2 weeks later in a maelstrom of stress, guilt and failure. But for some reason this new idea of writing 26 picture books in a month holds no such negative power over me. Maybe this is because I have no great expectations for myself in writing a good picture book. Maybe it’s because I don’t even have a very clear idea of what constitutes a good picture book. Maybe it’s because I will be free to write about whatever I want, and my commitment to a certain story or idea need only last for one day, or even for one hour. Whatever the reason, it sounds like just a whole bunch of fun without a lot of pressure.

I guarantee you right now there will be at least one book about a robot, maybe more. And a talking rock. And an okapi. Definitely an okapi. Yeah, I know you’ve probably never heard of it. I think the okapi has more indie cred than any other ungulate, but it’s going to blow up in the mainstream really soon and one of my picture books will be the cause. Then I’ll write another book about the okapi being a corporate sell-out.

Wish me luck?

Josh’s Froz-T-Freez Explained, Briefly

As we begin a new year here at the Freez (hopefully a year of consistent content), I thought it would be an opportune time to explain both to myself and to everyone else what exactly the Froz-T-Freez is.  This is the closest we will get to a mission statement.

As you might have noticed, the Froz-T-Freez isn’t an actual drive-in; it’s only a blog.  I’m not a soda jerk, line cook, or a small business owner.  We don’t offer any food here, except perhaps the occasional recipe.

So what is the Froz-T-Freez?  The idea of the Froz-T-Freez grew out of an obsession with drive-ins, but the content you will find here encompasses many other personal obsessions: music, books, photography, art, nature, pop culture, religion, and other randomly selected cultural and natural ephemora.

The Freez is a simply a place on the web for an aspiring writer, foodie, librarian, music nerd, art appreciator, and faithful person (and to clarify, “aspiring” goes in front of all the terms on that list) to practice his writing, explore and think through things, and champion things he thinks are cool or worthwhile:  It is my personally curated library/museum/advertisement/menu of the world as I see it at the moment.

Enjoy your meal.  And please don’t mention our secret menu.  It’s not real.

For an older version of “The Froz-T-Freez Story,” in which I go off about how I wanted to run a combo record store/soda fountain, click here.

My Continuing Commitment, or, Excuses

For the next month or so, what you can mainly expect to find here are random photos I take with my iPhone.

A couple of weeks ago, when I decided to post the Beehive book award nominees, I knew that move would bring some renewed traffic to this site. At that time I made a new commitment to post here regularly, tweet frequently, and generally engage in all those other good social media activities. I fully intended to commence writing and posting numerous reviews and commentary on literature, music and whatever else I might happen to be doing or thinking about. This wasn’t the first time I made such a commitment to myself, nor shall it be the last.

However, the sudden immediate necessity to enroll in an adolescent literature course, the need to study for a serious test in a month, my taking of a little second job as a software tester, and preparations to sell our house in Vivian Park have all combined to thwart my recreational writing. Believe me, I am going to be doing a lot writing for that literature course, but I will be sending it all to a teacher, rather than out here to bloggie land. (Watch out after my class is done, though; I may have a truckload of reviews and pieces that I can re-appropriate for the purposes of this site.)

So, enjoy the photos. I hope they bring you as much small satisfaction as they bring me. Happy springtime.