So, The Mountain Goat's All Hail West Texas... that's a fine little album. I'd listened to it before, in the background while on the computer, but today I gave it a more intense listen that I had previously. Not completely intent, got distracted at a few points, but today was also the first time I viewed it as a concept album... I was thrown by the first two tracks beforehand. With the exception of one song, the music is limited to vocals, guitar, and tape hiss. So, you know, lo-fi. And when I made my complaints about lyrics a while back... This definitely applies, really. Musically... Not the most interesting thing around. Lyrically, not a lot of the clever turns of phrase. He's a storyteller, a fairly straight-forward one. I should make some kind of exception of why I don't mind him but mind, you know, the other singer-songwriter people. I don't know. Could be because those other singer-songwriter people are more canonical. Could be because the concept album nature adds a bit more to the storytelling, but those first two songs are pretty good as well. I don't know. It's a sad little record, I suppose maybe even heartbreaking?

So, with the influence of that little piece of heartbreaking art, I resumed work on Companion, which I didn't finish the night before the blackout. I didn't even finish it tonight, I think. For a while I thought I might have, but that was based more on the idea that many short stories pussy out for their ending and just end on some vague note. I'm thinking I'm going to hold out for a climax. Like, the story kind of climaxed already, but I don't know. It didn't climax in a way that felt like an ending, and what I've written after that point doesn't seem like an ending either, and was written as pacing until the next big moment. But yeah, this story... It's sad, to me at least. Personal. As I wrote it, upstairs neighbor was listening to Either/Or on shuffle, and I really don't want to be known as the Elliott Smith of literature... Haha, no one is ever going to label me that. Sometimes I think of back-of-the-book quotes, and sometimes the quotes are ones that I wouldn't want to be associated with at all. But yeah, I guess this story could be described as personal, or therapeutic... I don't know what I'll do when I'm done with it. Don't know what friends to give it to, as I imagine most would want to steer clear of stories I write with bizarre emotional content. If I had a girlfriend who somehow was misled into thinking I was deep and tortuted, she'd eat this shit up with a spoon. But yeah, I'm not tortured. This story is a bit of an exorcism though, and the main character is named after me, even though he's not me in any way. I don't know who to let read this, or who I'd submit it to. It's not clever enough for the McSweeney's crowd... I'm thinking about sending them this other story that my writing has stalled on, the one about an erotic cake salesman.

But yeah, this is vaguely personal stuff, but moreso than that, in terms of submitting it for publication, is that it's a short story with a certain kind of content. It's not something that would run in The New Yorker. It's about a junior in high school who gives handjobs and listens to metal. There's more to it than that, but the "more to it" is emotional content, it's still "offensive" or "edgy" and who prints short stories like that? Playboy? They'd be turned off by the emotional content. And they probably don't take unsolicited submissions. And, hey, in what is a first for me, it's LONG. Probably longer than anything I've ever written. As it stands now, it'd probably be around seventeen pages if doublespaced. That is still very much a short story, not exactly a novella, but, it's still a bit of a victory seeing as how I have problems with pacing.

And, it turns out, problems when knowing where to end things.