As previously threatened, here's a little taste of Naropa, one of my favorite memoirs. Feels like it would be right at home with the other excerpts in Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Great Times that I just reread. I'm about ready to rubber-stamp the entire memoir finished. Initially, I anticipated it would take me roughly three hours to touch up a piece I hadn't revisited since the early 90s. Well ... revisions have been ongoing for three months! Delays are attributable to big changes in my life (exchanging an 8-foot wide dirt road in Taos, New Mexico for a maze of 18-lane freeways here in LA; more on that later), combined with the inescapable truth that compulsion is a bitch. 

Let's quickly review the rationale behind including memoirs on a band site:

1. I care about who the World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer is. I want it to be me, and I'm pretty sure it is.
2. The rest of the world could probably care less about who the World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer is, and frankly, it doesn't care whether it's me.
3. I don't care that the rest of the world could probably care less about who the World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer is, and I still want it to be me.

Peoples' tastes change. Who is the world's fastest human? People used to care about that, and now, if you stopped ten people on the street, I'd be surprised if one of them could answer correctly. Who is the heavyweight champion of the world? Same thing. Who is the Formula One driving champion? Ditto. Who knows, maybe someday the world will be a better and brighter place, and others will suddenly start caring about who deserves the mythical cross-platform crown. If so, the evidence trove will be here waiting.

And now, without further adieu, I present, for your reading pleasure, Chapter 10 of Naropa ...