A wasted holiday weekend, wasted by pervasive melancholy that kept me too blue to even enjoy doing nothing. While it's been persisting for weeks, the mood got deep over the past few days, deep enough to drown in. Nothing worked ... not booze, not sleep, not stimulant, not even the love of Lori. All I could do was stare blank-eyed at a television set to wait out the hours, taking no pleasure from the desperate antics before me. We got out a bit, took some long walks and even visited the zoo, but I simply could not shake the darkness. I was able to submerge the worst of it for a couple hours on Sunday during a brief End Times rehearsal and I'm feeling marginally better today, but I still lack for energy and can't summon any enthusiasm or desire for the things I used to want to do.

To relate slightly brighter news, the End Times choir experiment (known officially -- for now -- as "the Blacktree Singers") moves along slowly but surely. Choirmaster Tim Army's arrangements are hitting the right notes, evoking that mid-70s post-hippie folk gospel I remember from Bible camps and my days with Flint Youth Theatre. This is utterly different than any project I've undertaken before, which is exactly the point ... I need a clean slate after so many disappointments, a new approach to reset my mind and allow it to divine a new direction. Never before have I been in a band where the singers are reading their parts off sheet music, it's like a new language, perhaps a new language I can't now nor will ever speak, but the experience can't help but broaden me. Thanks, Tim ... and Tyson, Sally, Mike, Ric, Stephanie and the potential few who have pledged their time for future rehearsals.