I”m literally sitting on the unfinished play and Neska has left the theater …

Campers,

Like most serious bachelor senior writers my home has tens of thousands of pages of my work scattered in every room and filling every cabinet in my home.

I was gonna finish all of em I promised them individually as I packed them away neatly into one of a few thousand manila folders neatly sorted and labeled for when I get back to them.

And, I arrange them neatly in some cache of my personal Cold Case Files.

Most of them have people in them.

All of them are full of dreams.

Those of others or my own.

Before some of the pieces graduate to manila folders and hibernation in a former sock drawer or closet shelf, I keep them close to me because, well, I’m going to be finishing them any day now.

Just as soon as my daily life slows down.

It never has.

The two pieces I’ve kept closest are  …

My biography of Matt Gonzalez and …

My Play featuring the music of Linda Laflamme/Neska.

That last file is about a foot tall and has attained that altitude over 20 years or so of sitting next to my Underwood Typewriter and IBM Word Processor and a long line of discarded computers that you can now carry in a coat pocket.

Neska died last month in a small town in Northern Virginia.

Becky Cohen cabled me her New York Times Obituary.

Now, will I get to work on the thing as a final tribute before I check out myself ?

(h. brown November 13, 2024)

Folks,

My nightclub in St. Louis (‘h. brown’s’s) was the place Linda found, “to get my shit together”.

She wrote this piece while she was playing and place and acting as its Music Director in the frozen Winter of  1977-1978.

For Free.