Paul Sametz > Recent Status Updates

Gripping climax, and I’m on the home stretch. Still room to make this a tragedy or a romance. What a story!

Feel like I’ve been blindsided by the ravings of Blackstrap, and against my will, I’ve begun to comprehend them. He’s a hater!

Blackstrap is growing up, still illiterate, discovers romance, gets maimed by frostbite on surviving the Ocean Ranger disaster, moves to T.O. Metaphysics ensues.

More suffering! Am I becoming enured to the misery endured by these people? Apocalyptic visions abound. I. Must. Finish.

It’s even more brutal than I previously reported.
Some surprising falsehoods in the popular culture of the 1970s.
Run-on sentences with phrases separated by periods. Sentences and paragraphs broken up into fragments with periods. Just awful to read. I tried reading it aloud, and that was brutal too.

It’s starting to make more sense, but it’s still a delirium of impressions. I’m afraid to recommend it, because it may drive you mad, and the only antidote is to move to a Newfoundland outport for the rest of your life, and find out for yourself what it all means.

Boom! Blown away by the first few chapters of this amazing Newfoundland family history. Just passed a quick scene of sealers dying on the ice (i read Cassie Boon’s tale of this many years ago).
Brutal lives of brutal people. What an awful place - Bareneed, Conception Bay. Simply awful, and gripping!

Excellent stories about world travel, bicycled or not. Philippines was especially interesting.

There’s some analysis of recent Celtic music stars, but the current crop is way beyond the Chieftains. I wanted more theory but got more history. Continuing to study the remainder of this thick tome. Will update.

Good integration of Irish history and Irish music, and the persecution of Irish harpists by the English since 1300. Great stories in here.

The two biggest self-deceptions are that life has a “meaning” and that each of us is unique.
I’m getting a lot out of this book, a little at a time.

Jaw-dropping revelations continue: “The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a ‘meaning’ and that each of us is unique.” Well-reasoned, and curiously optimistic.

I found this book in a search when I was ordering other books through Book Outlet. I have already read Byrne’s How Music Works at least twice (I have two copies and have bookmarks in each).
I’m looking forward to reading his travelogues on bike through the world’s great cities, and adopting this philosophy of urban living in my own little town. I have the bike, I have the weather, now I am acquiring the will.

A few pages at a time... I’m getting used to it. A bathroom book.

To oneself, one is never aging. Like the personality was fixed early in life, and everything that happened to one was inevitable, like it could have been foretold by a deep examination of one’s DNA.
A good book is like a good friend. You like to have it around to have a drink with, or ask it how your new song is progressing. This is, then, a good book.

This is my second time through Bob Dylan’s autobiography (though it’s ‘Volume I” I doubt there will be a follow-up... yet with this week’s release of ‘Murder Most Foul’, it seems he just may wrap up this life project before pursuing a reincarnation.

I’m glad I stuck it out, as there’s an occasional insight worthy of the time. On playing live: “every time I play ‘Flash’...You jump on the riff and it plays you... you know you’re in for the ride now.”
He says he’s not in it for the money - it’s the thrill of making music. I feel the same way (but without the fame and fortune) I can’t find fault with this old hacker.