OCCASIONAL PHOTOS No.2: Deleted Roy Acuff

A Roy Acuff album cover that was going to be one of the photos in the book, but was dropped at the last minute. (The book has 26 photo pages: one for each letter of the alphabet, though the subjects of the photos are not that rigidly distributed. For instance, there's no picture of anything or anyone beginning with X...)

It's all finished... The text turns out to be 750,000 words. The whole manuscript, with photos and captions and index and everything, went to the printers on Friday. We should be on track for our publication date of JUNE 15.

Meanwhile, I have a couple of dates for talks in the US now, later in the summer:

AUG 30: CLEVELAND: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: (details to come); aptly, the subject will be "Bob Dylan & the History of Rock & Roll".

SEP 05: NEW YORK CITY: The New School: (details to come); subject will be "Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues".

More dates to be added soon.

I've finished correcting proofs, and they're back in New York. Still got photospreads to finalise. Only two months & a day to publication - it's an amazingly swift turnaround. And today here in the northeast of England, it feels like spring at last. There's a blackbird nesting in the shed we use as a utility room; she's looking very motherly, and surveys our intrusions with equanimity. But they'll nest anywhere, however unsuitable for their babies. They thrive here, despite a high casualty rate. It's a scattershot policy, and it works. So they're individually foolish but collectively wise. The opposite of us.

I'm still alive but it hardly feels like it - submerged in proof-correcting and nothing but: days, evenings, weekends; nothing else happens. Maybe those who write blogs are under some obligation to lead interesting lives, or at least to read books, listen to records, go to gigs and see films. But I'm marooned in the end zone, reading through 800,000 words hunting for misplaced apostrophes. Hard to cope with the dizzy glamour of it all...