Channeling My Father's Youth

I'm busily at work revising my memoir and I'm pleased with how things are going so far. I'm ready to take a stern look at some things I assumed needed to be a certain way from the very beginning and yesterday I completely rearranged the first chapter. A liberating feeling.

Then I needed a break. So I created a playlist.

Today I will be editing my description of my father's childhood and early music career. My father was born in 1912 and in his teens, in the roaring twenties, he was a guitarist in New York and earned extra money by selling silk stockings to Broadway chorus girls (I'm sure his mother was thrilled). I grew us listening to music from this period and thinking nothing of having Louis Armstrong playing all the time.

I spent a half hour combing through my music and now I have a 14 hour playlist of 1920's jazz. In addition to Louis Armstrong, I have George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman, Fletcher Henderson, and Count Basie. It's such fun to listen to this stuff.

And I have eliminated today's excuse to step away from my chair. Or at least I think so.