Thank You, Mr. Lateef & Ms. Franklin
Friday, April 2, 2021
I made it to the weekend. All of the slides were accounted for by late last night. was too tired to dare try cleaning any of the slides so I started laying things out for the book. It is intimidating but also an opportunity to be creative, so I am deciding to view it that way.
Before I briefly break down what I accomplished today, I have to give credit where credit is due.
I spent the week working up in the attic, exploring Yusef Lateef beyond his Eastern Sounds album. I had to listen on my laptop, which was a significant compromise in terms of quality of sound, but it worked well enough. I found the inspiration and the energy to push forward with a tedious task (a lot of the slides had been placed out of order somehow so I had to view and every one to make sure I didn’t miss a slide that I needed).
And in the evenings, I watched Genius: Aretha with OG. Painful at times to rewatch but I wanted to share in the experience with him and he was drawn to the story, to her music. She is someone who never gave up, who changed with the times and the shifts in sounds. But she was always Aretha Franklin. Her voice is undisputed. No one can touch her. There is only one. And she is timeless. She fought and endured a lot. And the series ended with her singing, “Nessum Dorma” - her way. You must listen to her.
***
And so today was spent messing around with the text box. I succeeded in typing a few paragraphs of Jan Stacy’s Introduction and saved the doc as an RFP. I added it to the software and then moved it into the text box. However, it fell outside of the margins. I spent way too much time trying to get rid of the ! sign stating that the text would be cut off. I ended up just doing a copy/paste from the original doc and then pressing the space bar at the start of each line, to nudge the first letter off of the yellow margin. It was tedious and I vowed to have OG figure out the magical solution to the issue. I want the writing to be aligned and such. So adjustments will probably need to be made. But the idea is to get started with something so that I can visualize the product.
I see now why people get paid to do this stuff. There is a lot involved. I may need invest in an editor to streamline and clean up the book once I have completed a draft. And I am willing to pay the $ for that.
But it felt good to at least get a few pages done. I don’t feel confident yet but I think it is important to push forward…and continue to make mistakes so that I can fix them.
