Writing dangerously & mournfully

It’s been an odd week; not entirely sure why.

One thing, maybe, is that I’ve been stuck for the past three days in a civil funeral for my murder vict… I mean, for the murder victim in my novel.

Let me just say that being mired in a funeral service is a whole lot less fun than being hung up in a country pub unable to get dinner on the table. At least there I had booze.

It’s a “civil funeral” (a term which I did not make up, but which brings to mind the probability that there are uncivil funerals) because the deceased in this case was opposed on principle to churches. He also didn’t have a whole lot of friends, so that limits the possibility of having people get up & tell remember-the-time stories.

He was, however, a blues fan, so I’ve been immersing myself in CDs from my collection. I’m not going the mournful route—the geezer was as ornery as they come—so I’ve got a few of the classics by Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins & some others.

But I couldn’t let it go without Bonnie Raitt. I’m thinking her version of “Louise” just has never been topped, but I can’t find a decent YouTube video of that one to share with you. (There’s something about the line “Louise rode home on the mail train” that just does me in.) So here’s another of hers that kind of speaks to me right now.

Bring on the weekend.