Day 22, Project 3: I Finally Broke In To The Prison

What ever possessed me to believe that Leonard Cohen would be the appropriate soundtrack for this job?

Well, I’ll tell you.

When I started setting things up and deciding what I might want to listen to, the only thing I could hear inside my head was “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried, in my way, to be free…”

So Songs of Leonard Cohen it had to be, because Johnny Cash’s version of that song is just just too sad to live through. (I wrote a Leonard Cohen song one time, years ago, but everyone I showed it to wound up asking me if I was alright, and then started calling me uncomfortably frequently “just to check in.” So I decided to leave the Leonard Cohen songs to Leonard Cohen from then on.)

But how did I never notice that it’s “bird on the wire” and not “bird on a wire”? I can’t, off the top of my head, see any particular significance to that misreading, but still. You’d think after however-many years and listenings I might have noticed before now. Maybe it’s all the attention to detail I’m learning from this g-d door.

Yeah, so anyway…

My decision to skip the sanding was a bad one. The thing was a mess. I had to sand it before I could even lay a finger on it without getting the heebie-jeebies, let alone go rubbing soggy rags all up and down it. And oh my god do I hate sanding decorative edges. It doesn’t work. You have to fold the sampaper (that was a typo but I like it so it’s staying: pass it on) and stick the edge into the creases, and the edge promptly loses its sand so it isn’t doing anything and you just want to not bother, but you can’t not bother so you keep going even though you can’t tell where you’ve done and where you haven’t.

Ugh!

Okay that’s done.

Bad decision number two was skipping thinner. Or so I thought when I started, anyway. The alcohol alone didn’t seem to be doing anything, so I put the cap back on and got the spirits. Did the whole door with that, at which point the entire thing looked wet so I couldn’t tell, when I hit it with the alcohol, if I was getting all of the square inches. So I went over it a couple times just to be sure.

I’m not positive, but I think maybe what Johnny meant when he said “the grain is open and you want to be careful,” is that if you get too rough with it at this point it’ll go all hairy like it’s trying to grow a beard. Not that I did or anything, of course. I’m just speculating.

Anyway, it’s done at least, and I think it’s going to be okay. We’ll see what Himself says when he has a look at it. In the meantime, I think it must be some kind of good sign that the last song on the album’s playing now, a song I somehow never really listened to before but that happens to be titled “We’ll Be Fine.” Goes like this: “we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine…” Nice, huh?

Or wait. Maybe it’s “will.” Hang on, let me check.

Yeah, sure enough, it’s will. As in the actual, real title: “Tonight Will Be Fine.” And the next line after that in the refrain?

“…for a while.”

I can't, even if I try, miss the significance in that particular misreading.

Day 22: Accomplished
Time: Seven depressing Leonard Cohen songs, so let’s just round it off to sixteen years.
Cost: Nothing
Johnny Saying That If I Hit It With Stain/Sealer, Then Varnish It, Then Sand It Again, Then Varnish It Again, The Door Will Be Fine, Will Be Fine, Will Be Fine: Perspicacious