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Walking the way the wind blows

This, then, is how one thing came to an end. It was the evening of June 30, and, as my co-editor had noted, that was the last day the final print edition of No Depression was meant to sit on newsstands.

We three here at home were in the midst of an impromptu cleaning frenzy. We had just installed a new CD player which holds five discs (a duplicate of the one we bought for the bookstore, days earlier), and Susan had turned it on so as to make the work go more pleasantly.

It was the sound of Greg Brown's voice which reminded me. It reminded me of my friend and our contributor, Mike Perry, whose path off the grid is much further along than mine will ever be -- but he has the advantage of having been raised on a dairy farm, not in the suburbs -- and whose last major piece for ND was a fine interview and character study of Mr. Brown.

And that reminded me, for reasons I shan't trouble the synapses to explain, that there sat in my fax machine a contract for Susan and me to sign. And so we did, and faxed it back.

With those signatures I ended my ownership interest in No Depression. I have troubled in the following days whether to mention this, and, if so, how best to do so. Because this has always been a deeply personal matter -- the writing and designing and publishing of our little magazine; the sense I have ever carried with me that I spoke to and with and among a community of friends, known and unknown -- I find that I cannot leave it unsaid.

So the first thing to be said is that I leave No Depression in good hands, in the care of people sworn to do right by our legacy. My leaving has to do with choices I wish to make in my life, and under no circumstances is it meant to suggest anything else. I asked to leave. It is time, and maybe I shall explain that at some later point, and perhaps you reading today have read enough of my musings these last few months, these last few years, so as to know already why that might be so.

The second thing is that I will not be entirely gone. With the forbearance of my remaining partners, I will continue to blog on this site. Sometimes I will even write about music, for it remains a fundamental part of who I am, if less a part of how I work toward the end of each day. And I will continue to design and co-edit (mostly design, this first issue) the bookazine we have engaged to publish through the University of Texas Press.

In this it should be clear that, for good and ill, I am a print person. And I am stepping aside because what No Depression needs right now is a web person. Persons, probably. They are on schedule -- as much as such things adhere to a schedule -- to relaunch this website come fall. But as I have watched this process unfold, it has become painfully clear to me that I haven't the stomach for it. It's not what I do, not who I am, not who I'm going to be.

And so I will step out of the way.

Here at home, when the cleaning was done, we opened a couple bottles of Hennepin, which claims now to be a saison though it's really a pretty good North American knockoff of the Belgian Duvel (so good a knockoff that Duvel now owns the brewery), and I never thought of Duvel as a farmhouse ale. No matter. We had a glass, and saluted.

For the rest, I am tanned, rested, and ready for what may come. And patient enough not to hasten its coming.

Y'all be good. I'll be watching. Listening.

Posted by grant on July 3, 2008 3:15 PM | Permalink

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