A-F Friendly
"Riff" is a great word, although I feel a bit — not quite estranged, since we never had a relationship to begin with — distant from "riff", and I doubt that I will ever be as close as I am to truly favorite words like "madcap" and "chuffed". No doubt this is tied to my being a midwestern white boy who is musical but in a white-boy way.
Once, in my high school orchestra class, we had the band director as substitute. He also led the jazz groups. He taught us how to "swing" things, which I got the hang of okay (except that it always felt a bit calculated). However, when it came to improvisation, I was hopeless. I couldn't play what I "heard" or what I "felt" — I played music that was written.
And so, I don't riff much, except perhaps in words. I can't be the only one who was captivated some years back by Ken Nordine's "Word Jazz" on NPR, can I?
Thus, I felt a bit chuffed when John Lombard blogged:
The Bearcastle Blog, also picked up by Shakespeare's Sister this week, posted this riff on the title of my Blog:
I've riffed! It's a very nice little bit of validation that I've been waiting decades for.
(He refers to his blog's name mostly by the considerably shorter acronym "TMYHNIHMIHBADITGE"; for the longer version, you can see my original post or follow the link above.)
Several years back, when I first started writing the bear porn, I had a mentor who encouraged me and helped me along with that terrifying step of asking the publisher to publish a story for the first time. When that story was published, I was delighted to find that a story by my mentor, Charlie, was in the same magazine issue! It wasn't a superstitious thing, I don't believe, but some sort of confirming cosmic confluence. Whatever, it was good.
So, I was pleased when Shakespeare's Sister mentioned me in her Blogrollin' post, just because I quite like the stuff she writes, so it had some value to me. It was also a delightful thing to be mentioned in the same breath as "TMYHNIHMIHBADITGE", which has been fun reading so far and a nice addition to my blogroll. Besides, John's profile says he's from Brisbane, Australia, and my fantasies have been well enough stoked by pictures of hunky Aussie life-savers in their little red bikini swimming suits that I may have a fatal attraction to men from Australia. Besides, we may have a similar sense of humor (for which the world might be grateful that we half a world apart.)
Now, while we're on the subject of words, a curious point arises. At the end of John's post (for reasons you'll have to discover for yourself), he makes this gloriously positive assertion:
Yep, we're ass-fucking friendly here at TMYHNIHMIHBADITGE.
I can't remember whether I've ever typed the "f-word" here in the blog (yes, I've used it enough times in the stories), so I don't know whether I'll start now or later or ever. However, I can circumvent all those anxieties by quoting it, as above, without compunction.
Thanks John!