B.M. Simpson's Blog

I wrote these fun lyrics to Scufflin by Charlie Musselwhite back in 2008.Take a deep breath of lifeLike a full grown kidHoney, rollin in the grassDon’t bring me downAhhh, I knew a chap That never grew upBaby, Rollin in the grassDon’t bring me downThe rhythm is goodYea, the rhythm is rightWe’ll be rollin in the grassTill the early morning light.We been soakin up the sunBaby all day longWe’ll be soakin up the wineTill the morning comesWell… the music is jamminMan, all over townAnd, rollin in the grass Don’t bring me downI don’t dream about tomorrowDon’t think about todayI’m jamming to the musicThat’s jus how I prayWe’ll be movin, we’ll be groovingWe’ll be ridin on the wavesIf the good lord is willingDarlin we’ll be savedWe’ll be rollin, we’ll be strollinWe’ll be slammin, we’ll be jamminWe’ll be smoking, we’ll be tokenWe’ll be livin life rightWe’ll be huggin, we’ll be kissinWe’ll be cookin in the kitchenBaby, rollin in the grassDon’t bring me downMe and my baby, we’re paintin the townAnd rollin in the grassDon’t bring me down.Well the summer could be sizzlinThe rain it could be drizzlingThe traffic could be goinAnd our blood it could be flowinMe and my baby we’re a shakin the crowdAnd rollin in the grassDon’t bring me downMy shoes are on the porch With the grass between my toesAw, your lips are sweet as honeyAnd you’re smellin like a roseYea we’re livin life goodAnd we’re livin life rightBaby, rollin in the grass Don’t bring me downWe’ll be jumpin, we’ll be bumpinWe’ll be movin, we’ll be groovinWe’ll be singin, we’ll swinginWe’ll be doin what we’re doinMe and my baby gonna do the run around And rollin in the grassDon’t bring me down.Well I knew a chap That never grew upHe was runnin all aroundLike a frisky little pupHe was dancing all aroundTill the early mornin lightCause the music is goodand the music is rightIf you wanna have some fun you better hit the groundCause rollin in the grassDon’t bring me downI said, rollin in the grassDon’t bring me down.Baby, rollin in the grass Don’t bring me downYea, rollin in the grass Don’t bring me downOhh, rollin in the grass Don’t bring me downGonna party all nightLike a crazy old clownBaby, rollin in the grass Don’t bring me down

A little less than a year ago we took a trip to Cuba and stayed in Old Havana for five wonderfully eye opening days. Simply put, we had a great time and we can’t quite decide if it was so good that we should go back and do it again, or was it so good that we should we never do anything to tarnish the memory. It is a good problem to have.From walking around the city, to eating fantastic food, going to Hemmingway’s home, and meeting wonderful people, it was one of the most enjoyable trips we have taken in a long time.As we go through these challenging Corvid-19 times, I thought it would be a good memory to share. I hope you enjoy it.A few glances of our trip to Cuba.

Whether people realize it or not, the single most important ingredient in writing a good story is conflict. Without it, a story lacks purpose. Big versus small, good versus bad, love versus loneliness, present versus past or future, starvation versus prosperity, right versus wrong, warm versus cold, man versus nature, enlightened versus lost, safe versus danger, smart versus dumb, calmness versus frustration, war versus peace or sweet versus sour, conflict exist in nearly every story that captures a reader’s attention. You cannot root for the good character if there is not a chance that he or she might fail. Hence, success versus failure, or good versus bad. Good writing and structure and all the other technical elements that goes along with creating a quality story are presumed necessities, but conflict is the key. Reading a story without conflict is like eating food without flavor. While it may have been cooked correctly, and it may have filled the void in your stomach, when asked, “How was your dinner?” The honest answer is inevitably, “Eh. It was okay.” Imagine Jack and Jill, if Jack didn’t fall down. They just walked to the top of the hill, and that was that. Imagine Romeo and Juliette if the young souls had simply met, fell in love, and lived happily forever after. Even How-To books have conflict. First there is something you do not know, and then the writer offers information so you do know. Without the solution to the problem, “Windows 10 for Dummies” would simply be a list of things you don’t know how to do in Windows 10. I suppose the conflict could be ignorance versus knowledge, or problem versus solution.Not long ago a writer asked me what I thought the key element should be in a children’s story she was writing. It was one of those fifteen words per page picture books. My answer? Conflict. Without the Ying & Yang, stories are boring, no matter how well written they may be, and no matter who the audience is. Some genres are simple to create conflict. War stories, love stories, horror stories, and crime stories have their big conflicts almost built in by default, but it’s the small conflicts throughout the stories that capture people’s imagination. It can be something as simple as a shoelace that repeatedly comes untied. Getting the lace to stay tied becomes a silly little battle (conflict) within a bigger story of someone marching off to war.So, when you sit down to write, keep in mind that there is conflict in nearly everything in life. When describing the awe inspiring beauty of watching a child play, if written well, the implication will be that only a child is capable of losing themselves in the simple joys of life with no thought or knowledge of the outside world. Hence, the innocence of youth versus innocence lost in growing up, is the subtle conflict within a story that is probably about something completely different than a child playing in the sand. Conflict is not always front and center, but if you want to keep your reader in the story, conflict is almost always on your page.

The soft low cry of the blues guitar, sounding as if it were weeping to the world in a deep, sad, voice lingered heavy in the air. Amber twangs reached into the darkness, gliding through the room, cutting through the smoke and light and mumbles from the scattering of bodies sitting in the bar. The guitar was captivating and almost none existent at the same time as the weight and lightness of the music drifted aimlessly. Her fingers glided with ease up and down the polished and worn frets, while the fingers of the other hand moved with effortless precision and speed, working the strings in a language that she and the guitar clearly understood and communicated with. When the woman playing the guitar began to sing, her voice eased across the room as if it were warm water flowing across the floor after spilling from an old cast iron bathtub. And like the water on the worn pine floor, her voice ran smoothly, but took twist and turns as it slipped in and out of crocked, splintered, cracks, creating a raspy sweetness that was drenched with passion and regret. The bass of the song was lonely while the tempo oozed despair, and the lyrics dreamt of hope, dim hope, but hope nonetheless. Her words, her life, they clung to the ever-present hope that love, always slipping away, would somehow come home to rest someday in her rain drenched world.She sat slouched on a stool that had been the temporary dwelling of one artistic soul after another, night after night, season after season. The small table sitting beside her on the stage held nothing but a chipped, yellowed ashtray with her Marlboro burning into the air, and an almost dead Guinness Stout waiting to be finished off. Watching her from halfway across the room she looked like a woman-child who had not been wandering earth long enough to be telling this story of pain and despair, yet there she was. She was a twenty or thirty year old devil-angel, running on empty, and looking at the world through eyes wise beyond her years. Her song was too sad to be true, to sincere to be made up, and he wondered if anyone could imagine this kind of pain without experiencing it. Then he wondered why someone would want to imagine it if they didn’t have to. It crept in on him as he sat in drifting consciousness, and there could be no doubt that her music, her song, her story, were her reality whether it was imagined or not. Like a moth drawn to the flame he fluttered into her world full of heartache and introspection. He imagined her loneliness and then claimed it as his own. He felt the heavy hand squeezing her heart and understood that their souls were connected. She and he had both been in thatworld. They understood what it felt like to know that a tidal wave was coming to take their world away, while all others were unaware. She clearly knew what it meant to lose love, and he somehow knew what it was like to die.The waitress came over and asked if he wanted another drink and he held up the almost empty glass of scotch without saying a word. She scribbled something on a pad and turned away, heading back towards the bar. He wondered for a minute if she, the waitress, felt what he felt. In the smoke filled room it seemed as though it would be impossible to escape the strange universe where the blues singer and the lonely man seemed to exist in, but as he watched the waitress work her way through the tables, she smiled and joked with a young guy in a denim jacket, and he knew that she was not part of their world, not tonight.The young-old singer ended the first song, but held her fingers tightly on the strings so the vibrations continued to linger in the air. As they started fading away, she took a long drag on her cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs for a minute, and then let it drift out into the dim spotlight that shone down on her face. Just before the guitar faded into silence, her fingers strummed the heavy strings and then started picking and lightly strumming a quiet blues rhythm. Once again, her fingers seemed to be an extension of the guitar or the guitar was an extension of her hands, he couldn’t quite decide which was which. Her thumb rhythmically tapped on the face of the hollow wood, sending the thump of a heavy heartbeat into the already thick air. Her eyes were hidden behind the soft silky eyelids that protected her from everything. The music, the smoke, her eyelids, probably her cigarettes, maybe the Guinness, they were all protecting her from the sharp edges of life. She, just like him, knew that it was the small jagged outcroppings that were the most harmful, the most painful. The huge, beautiful, curling, glassy ocean waves were themselves quite harmless. It was the merciless coral and rocks beneath the surface that did the damage. Life somehow didn’t seem all that different. She didn’t quite know how she ended up in the state of heart and mind and life that she seemed to dwell in. Reflecting back in time, it seemed she’d always known she would end up here, just as he always knew when it was all said and done, the day would come when he’d have to face it all. That time hung in the back of his mind, in his dreams, and in his life for nearly as long as he could recall. So when she strummed and began to moan in her thick, cherry sweet voice, without having a conscience thought, he knew they were coming from and going to the same place.The perky waitress returned, set the glass of scotch on the table, and smiled.“You like the music?” she asked, not caring about the response, not experiencing life pulsating from the small stage. He smiled, raised his glass in the motion of a brief toast, then put it against his lips and let the liquor do it’s warm burning magic. It wasn’t music that anyone really “liked.” It was music that captured him, took him prisoner, and reminded him that he was not the only broken soul in the universe. Throughout the bar, people of a different world than his milled about the room making small talk, while they overlooked the dark clouds that hung in the rhythm. The stringed vibrations gently swept through the air, her full lips began to open and she called to him, cried with him, loved with him, and eventually died with him. Her songs, like her life, were a complete contradiction of love and loneliness, of hope and despair, yet they somehow worked. On the written page the words spoke of love sublime, but the rhythmic music rang of an illusive love that almost was, but had not yet come to be. Perhaps it was for a while, but then it wasn’t. A love held tightly in her arms, and a love that slipped easily through her fingers. Life.Her warm, raspy voice oozed of life, of love, and of heartache. She asked questions already answered. She asked again hoping for better answers that would not come. Then she dreamt sweet, sad dreams and shared them with those who would listen.As your head lies on the pillow what thoughts run through you mind?Are they tales of love unending?Are your dreams the same as mine?Loving you’s the only thing I need.Loving you’s the answer to my dreams.When the lights go down on the edge of townShine your love on me.Your sweet caress and tenderness are answers to my dreams.Loving you takes my breath away.Loving you gets me through each day.Loving you’s the only thing I need.Her voice cried like a fallen angel. She sang words of love, but the music, the rhythm, her voice, they all made it clear that it was an illusive, longed for love. It was the dream that quickly faded when she awoke from blissful sleep and faced the hard, loneliness of life.Clouds blow in from stormy seas and darken clear blue skies.Rain runs down the window painlike tear drops in my eyes.Your sweet love blows the storm away.Loving you gets me through each dayLoving you’s the only thing I need.When the lights go down on the edge of townShine your love on me.Your sweet caress and tenderness are answers to my dreams.Loving you takes my breath away.Loving you gets me through each day.Loving you’s the only thing I needThe guitar hummed like the devil herself. The words were the lie that the music revealed.Rainbows reach across the sky like pastels from a brush.Your tender kisses steal my heartI’ve fallen for your touch.I’ve tried to lie and say it isn’t true.Can’t believe I’m so in love with you.But loving you is all I ever need.Her voice faded as she sadly repeated the chorus. She sang to him, she sang to herself, she sang to everyone, and she sang to no one. The words drifted, then faded. Memories drifted, then faded. Love drifted, then faded. Life drifted, then faded. She drifted, then faded. Another scotch. Another cigarette. Time to go.

Tired of the same old Washington Politics? Well, now you can do something about it. It’s February 2020 and we’re officially kicking off the Island Dogs for President Campaign. This is how it works. When someone ask, “Who are you voting for?” Simply say, Island Dogs, and then grab a beer or rum drink. What does the Island Dog candidate promise if elected? Free beer and rum drinks and munchies and stuff along that line to everyone who wants it. FREE, I say. FREE! And while we’re at it, we might as well throw in some music. If we can afford a free wall, and free healthcare, and free college, we can damn sure afford beer and tacos. We’ll finally have a voice that makes sense to all of us. We’ll finally get free stuff that we actually want, like a pool with a beach and a tiki bar on the back lawn of the White House. All heated, of course.So, how is the Island Dogs campaign different than all the others campaigns, other than promising epic parties? We are not only not asking for donations, we are saying straight out that we do not want donations. I’ve got no idea how all that campaign finance stuff works. And while I know lots of politicians get rich doing this stuff, we’re just looking for a better way of life. Not looking for money or jail time. We are not a Socialist Party. We are the Socializing Party. So, grab and beer and a burger. Or grab a margarita and a taco, and remember that our goal is to Make Americans Island Dogs! (MAID). Jus Chillin… that’s our goal in life. So, if you’re confused about who to vote for, go to the closest beach bar and Make Americans Island Dogs. You’re not from the USA? No matter. Being an Island Dog is an international goal. Maybe we can get the United Nations in on the campaign.As a side note, we will not be participating in any pre-election debates… unless free drink and munchies are served, and we get to have input on what music is played. That is our only campaign demand at this time.

When I was young I dreamed of sailing ships with tall white sails,to the seven seas and mysteries with mighty rolling waves.When the oceans all were conquered to my home I would return,with sailors tales of storms and whales and lessons I had learned.Then we’d step ashore at our home once more have a drink with all our friends,till a distant voice left me no choice but to do it all again.When you dream about tomorrow, do you dream of yesterday?Do the kisses still lie sweetly on your lips?If the hands of time were falling kind, would you do it all again?Would you climb aboard and sail the tall white ships?I met a man with worn out hands from working long hard years.He was old and wise with sparkling eyes.He was sipping on his beer.He spoke about old times he’d had and faces that he’d seen.Spoke of love’s he’d lost and winters frostand all that could have been.Through the bar room smoke he softly spoke, said he wouldn’t change a thing.Given one more chance at life’s romance he’d do it all again.When you dream about tomorrow, do you dream of yesterday?Do the kisses still lie sweetly on your lips?If the hands of time were falling kind, would you do it all again?Would you climb aboard and sail the tall white ships?Time has come and time has gone and I have no regrets.Not the late night bars, the well earned scars,not even smoking cigarettes.When the night sets in I’ll surely grin and think of days gone by.The boats, the friends,the times back when we never questioned why.So let’s raise our glass.May your ships run fast.May you sail on like the wind.May your hearts stay true, your skies stay blue.May your journeys never end.When you dream about tomorrow, do you dream of yesterday?Do the kisses still lie sweetly on your lips?If the hands of time were falling kind, would you do it all again?Would you climb aboard and sail the tall white ships?

(Above): Picture of me recovering from writing my first book.I wrote my first book about eight or ten years ago. It was was somewhere around three hundred pages. I can’t remember the exact page count, but I’m not going to open the file to look at it. It’s too painful. The subject does not matter, nor does the genre. I was driven and focused when I worked on it. I lived in a small house in St Kitts, BWI that only had a/c in the bedroom. On most days, the rest of the house hovered around 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Every night for a few months, I came home from a long day of work and promptly sat at my computer and started banging away. I had written songs, poems, and short stories for more than a few years. It was time to take the next step. It was time to write a book.So, I wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I edited and edited and edited. Then, I read it one last time and felt pretty darn good about what I had done. The book, at least an early version was finished. I was proud of myself. It was time to take a break and refresh before doing anything else with it. A month or two later I picked up the manuscript, sat down on the couch, and began reading. Front to back, word by word, line by line, page by page, I read the entire book. When I turned the last page and closed the cover, I took a deep breath and laid the book on the coffee table. I sat back into the cushions and said, “Wow. That was really bad.”When I say it was bad, I mean it was bad like it couldn’t really be fixed kind of bad. It was horrible. It sucked. Writing a new book would be easier than rewriting that pile of gibberish that I managed somehow to ramble on about for three hundred pages, without telling a clear story or making any cohesive point. It’s an understatement to say that I was discouraged. Three hundred pages of bad writing.So, let me tell you what I did NOT do. Unlike those goofy stories where people say, “I just picked myself up and brushed myself off and wrote a better one,” I did what real human beings do. I moped a bit. I sulked and got a discouraged about my writing. I questioned whether or not I was good enough to write anything worth reading. I don’t really recall how long that period lasted for, but I can tell you that it was quite a while before I started writing another book. There was no magic moment when I had an epiphany that put me back to work on my writing. What I did was to start writing a little, then a little more, and then wrote a few short stories that led me to a better place, and that made me think that I “might” be able to write something worth reading. A year or two later I started writing my next novel. I just finished the first draft of my third novel (I don’t count the first one). I have two published novels, with the third on the way. And how good are they? Well, that’s not really for me to say, but I assure you that they are better than my first attempt. And why are they better? Because I read, and studied, and wrote, and improved, and kept learning, and kept plugging away at writing. I hope my third novel is my best so far. I hope my fourth will be better than the third. Time will tell.In the meantime… I just write. That’s what I do. What about you?

I keep hearing all the hype about how things have never been this bad! And these are the worst times ever! And then end is near! And endless blurbs of other such nonsense. To help some of you put things in perspective I threw together just a few tidbits of information. This should help you to calm down and catch your breath.Pre 1920’s:1857, toilet paper was invented. I included this first one just to get your attention. Just imagine the world before toilet paper. Really! Think about it.1914 – 17, World War 1, estimated deaths, 38 MILLION.1918, World Wide flu epidemic, estimated 75 million deaths.1920’s :Slavery had ended in US only 60 years ago. Segregation for Black America was still a way of life. Integration is still just a dream.1920, Bubonic plague hits India. Hundreds of thousands died.1929, Shootings in Chicago: St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Fourteen members of a Chicago gang are shot to death in a warehouse on orders from Al Capone.1929, Stock Market Crash: Black Tuesday. The bull market of the late 1920s comes to a crashing end. Between September 3 and December 1, stocks declined $26 billion in value.1929 – 1939, The Great Depression hits. It was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world.1930s:1939 – 1945, WWII: estimated deaths, 75 million. By the way… this was orchestrated by a real Nazi, not a made up by the media Nazi.1940’s:1940, Draft: The military draft age was lowered from 21 to 18 years old. One and a half million people are drafted into the military.1945, 2 Atomic Bombs dropped over Japan. 80,000 people dead.1950’s:Korean War, 1950 – 53, estimated deaths, 2 million.1950, Politician, Andrew McCarthy began destroying lives of hundreds of Americans who HE proclaimed to be un-American.1955 – 1975, Vietnam War, estimated deaths, 2 million.1960’s & 1970’s:1963, President John F. Kennedy assassinated.1965, Malcolm X assassinated.1968, Robert Kennedy assassinated.1968, Martin Luther King assassinated.1968, Asian flu, 2 million deaths.1970, Protest broke out across the nation. Four students were murdered by the government at Kent State University.1972, Terrorist attack at Munich Olympics, 9 Olympians murdered.1974, President Richard Nixon resigns under weight of scandal.1979, Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant meltdown.1980’s & 1990’s:1980’s to present, Aids, 30 million deaths.1980, John Lennon murdered.1981, President Ronald Reagan shot.1990, fist Gulf War starts after Iraq invades Kuwait.1991, Soviet Union Collapses.1991, Public access became available for the World Wide Web.1995, Oklahoma City bombing, 168 deaths.1992, Hurricane Andrew destroys South Florida.1998, President Bill Clinton admits to having inappropriate sexual relations with an intern after masturbating on her in the Oval Office.1999, Columbine School shooting, 13 dead.2000’s:2000, VP Al Gore concedes the Presidential election and then changes his mind, leading to over a month of court proceedings and political wrangling before Gore concedes again for a final time.2001, US attacked on US soil for the first time in modern history. Islamic Extremist killed over 3000 Americans.2003, US invades Iraq.2004, Facebook Created thus creating an atmosphere that fosters the notion that the most tragic day in history is always today, with tomorrow certainly being worse than today. Within a decade, all major news media follows suit. The tragic end is near, or so we are constantly told.2020, Donald Trump won’t stop tweeting. This is somehow is being compared as equal to all the issues above, with the media hype concluding that his tweets are far worse than the sum total of all previous tragedies. If the tweets don't stop, the world as we know it will end!!My friends, Media Hype is just noise that should be ignored. Go to the beach. Have a rum drink. Watch the waves. Stay cool. Life is short and gets one day shorter each and every day.

There are world renown chefs and there are unknown chefs who have world renown talent and passion, combined with the drive to create some of the best cuisine anyone has ever tasted. Fame and success do not go hand in hand. There are also people who make a decent living flipping burgers at the local diner, and still others who crank out fast food at McDonalds and Burger King. There is no shame in doing any of these jobs and we all do what we love to do, or what we want to do, or what we need to do to get by in the world. At the same time, nobody should ever confuse flipping burgers with having the talent, passion and drive to create food that is nothing short of fine art.Writing is not all that much different than cooking. Like food, literary menus vary far and wide. There are different styles, different cultures, different genre’s, and each of them, to one degree or another, have different writing rules. The rules for writing a thirty thousand word YA novel by an author who cranks out ten books a year, and the rules for writing a hundred thousand plus word, deeply detailed, serious adult novel by an author who puts out one book every few years are likely as different as flipping burgers at McDonalds and creating roast duck at the Ritz Carlton. And of course, just as there is food to fit every taste, there is writing to fit the taste at every level between fast food burgers and roast duck.The only hard-set rule that I know of that encompasses the entire writing world is this. Writers write. All the other rules determine the flavor, the style, and the quality of what we write. Make sure you know your menu before you decide which recipe to follow.And when you as a writer share your rules for writing, be aware that your rules will not necessarily work for everyone else’s writing, any more then advice from a burger flipper at the McDonalds could give all that much advice to a 5 star chef, or perhaps visa versa.

There are world renown chefs and there are unknown chefs who have world renown talent and passion, combined with the drive to create some of the best cuisine anyone has ever tasted. Fame and success do not go hand in hand. There are also people who make a decent living flipping burgers at the local diner, and still others who crank out fast food at McDonalds and Burger King. There is no shame in doing any of these jobs and we all do what we love to do, or what we want to do, or what we need to do to get by in the world. At the same time, nobody should ever confuse flipping burgers with having the talent, passion and drive to create food that is nothing short of fine art.Writing is not all that much different than cooking. Like food, literary menus vary far and wide. There are different styles, different cultures, different genre’s, and each of them, to one degree or another, have different writing rules. The rules for writing a thirty thousand word YA novel by an author who cranks out ten books a year, and the rules for writing a hundred thousand plus word, deeply detailed, serious adult novel by an author who puts out one book every few years are likely as different as flipping burgers at McDonalds and creating roast duck at the Ritz Carlton. And of course, just as there is food to fit every taste, there is writing to fit the taste at every level between fast food burgers and roast duck.The only hard-set rule that I know of that encompasses the entire writing world is this. Writers write. All the other rules determine the flavor, the style, and the quality of what we write. Make sure you know your menu before you decide which recipe to follow.And when you as a writer share your rules for writing, be aware that your rules will not necessarily work for everyone else’s writing, any more then advice from a burger flipper at the McDonalds could give all that much advice to a 5 star chef, or perhaps visa versa.