The first draft

I tried in vain to find an old photo of me doing an interview, but I did come across this first photo of Summer after we chose her from the litter of 10 puppies in August 2021.

I spent 50 years writing “the first draft of history.” I left that task to younger souls almost a year ago now. I still do some clerical work for my last set of colleagues, so I can have a little more spending money, and I still write first drafts on the side.

First drafts of what, one might ask, and I’m not quite sure. Some of what appears here in the blog will end up in books, some in songs. Like some of my city council or court stories, some could use a second draft or a revision, but I rarely had time for a second draft; it was “here you are” and on to tomorrow’s news.

I wrote what I saw. I honestly believed that it was not my role to pass judgment, so I kept my opinions out of my work as best I could. After awhile, a guy starts to have opinions. Still, it’s a good exercise to work to understand those with different beliefs, especially when your job is to explain what’s happening fairly and accurately — the first draft of history is going to affect every other draft as time goes on, after all.

It should not be obvious whether the reporter loves or despises the people s/he is writing about. In a perfect world the reporter will be neutral, but that doesn’t happen much anymore, and I don’t get the feeling neutrality is encouraged in these times.

I suppose I came to libertarianism — and not the Libertarian Party, by the way — because my job required me to try to portray Democrats and Republicans in as neutral terms as I could muster. That meant understanding what they believed and what they opposed in the never-ending theater they acted in. 

It quickly becomes clear that everyone wants the same things for the most part — comfort, food, shelter, a better life for their kids and themselves, clean air, clean water, not to be hassled by criminals — and the political stage is a quarrel over the best way to have those things. It has devolved into a struggle for the power to impose their solutions on the rest of us, whether we like it or not.

The libertarian way is to let informed individuals make their own decisions about their lives. My job was to provide that information in a way that helped people make up their own minds.

Ultimately that led to my core belief — Love God and love your neighbor. Some of our neighbors have idiotic political notions — forgive me for being blunt — but they honestly believe those notions will lead to a better world, and what’s not to love about someone who wants a better world? Some Christians condense it to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” but there’s enough hate in the world. The idea is to love the neighbor, unconditionally. You may have serious questions about their politics and life choices, but that doesn’t make them less worthy of love.

At least that’s what I’m putting in my first draft, although I’m pretty sure that thought will make it into future versions, too.

Who is the imposter

Who’s there? Why do you stare at me so, behind those shades, with that cryptic smile on your face? Why do you tilt your body just so, as if seeking the best angle to see through my carefully crafted facade? 

Damn, you see right through me, don’t you? You recognize phony when you see it because you embrace who you really are — not a snowman at all but an avatar, a callback to a winter now passed and a story lost to time.

I bet you and the other plush toys have a belly laugh at our expense, you with your soft cynicism and your jovial artifice. “Come join us, imposter! We’re not what we seem, either! There’s not a gram of frozen water in my bones, and yet you wrap a scarf around my neck to fend off the cold.” He can see that I, too, am only pretending.

On the other hand, if I pretend to be a poet long enough, and practice hard, perhaps one day I’ll write something poetic. That’s how humans grow. He will always be a soft, ironic imitation of a snowman. I may be a soft, ironic imitation of an artist today, but given time and effort I may become one. Poor little toy, he can only smile as if he knows something, but the smile is all he knows.

Got three minutes?

This is my week to stop procrastinating, or so I’ve told myself. One thing I had been meaning to do is to upload Crimson Sky on New Year’s Morn, my new album, to the distribution universe.

It’s a process that can take up to six weeks, so I set a “release date” of May 19 and a “pre-order date” of April 21. But in the meantime you can hear 30 seconds of each track by clicking on the name of the album up there or scrolling to the bottom of this post and clicking on the album cover. The clips each begin about a minute into the song.

These 12 tunes were all written in a burst of creativity that began New Year’s Eve and continued into early February. They’re songs about love, and peace, and Jesus, although not all of them are exactly spiritual. 

This is the 22nd (!) album I’ve made since I started making homemade music back in the 1970s, but only the third I’ve released into the wild so that you can stream it on places like Apple Music or Spotify or however you stream music in these streaming times. 

You should be able to access the first two by searching on your streaming service for “Bluhm Ten Thousand Days” or “Bluhm New Dog Old Tricks” to reach the albums I created in 2010 and 2025, respectively. There’s also a collection of my recordings from 40 years ago over on SoundCloud.com. 

If all goes the way it’s supposed to be, in about six weeks you’ll be able to search for “Bluhm Crimson Sky” to hear and/or download the new album. It’s fun to be living in an era where an amateur singer-songwriter like me can share his little efforts with friends or anyone else with the patience to listen. 

There’s a lot of us out there, and we don’t have to wait for some gatekeeper to discover us anymore. The beautiful thing about modern times is we’ve been granted the ability to open the gate ourselves.

Of course, without gatekeepers there are a lot of us out there who should not quit our day jobs, and I may be one of those in your eyes and ears. But if there’s an audience waiting, it’s easier than ever for us to find each other. That’s what’s beautiful.