Gotta Get Behind the Mule...

Like Tom Waits sings on his album Mule Variations, "You've gotta get behind the mule every morning and plow." One of the things that has been making my life a little insane over the last week is the fact that I have really not been able to do any real work. Work for clients, work for my own business, work for myself, or work for my friends who are stranded like me.

Today (well, yesterday actually) I began working on the email lists that Pat Jolly kept for informing people of all the things going on in The Big Easy before it became The Big Gumbo. I have so far spent several hours each day receiving and resending emails to bring people into contact with each other and with the information people need to know who is safe, who is found, and who is still unaccounted for. Sitting here in this little room in Murphy North Carolina, I am finding that I am able to find at least a small amount of meaning in helping out in some way.

I have also, finally, been able to do some work for clients in California. It's not a lot and it's not really profound, but I'm getting my stride back.

The other thing that came up today is that Tom Morgan of Jazz Roots proposed that he and I start a roadtrip next week, seeking and finding the musicians scattered all around creation and recording their "storm stories." This excites me to no end. This is the kind of thing I was born to do and it finally begins to answer the question I have been asking myself over and over and over again for the last week. To quote Tolstoy (and Billy Quan in "The Year of Living Dangerously") "What then must we do?"

What I CAN do is drive a car and run a digital recorder and ask questions and take pictures and seek to understand a little bit better what this great tragedy means for those of us lucky enough to still be around.

So... stay tuned. I've got some work to do and the work is giving me my life back.