I’ve not written much recently and for that I apologize. But there comes times when it’s sometimes not possible, and that time has been upon recently.

I’ve been busy and that’s good. It’s bad in that I’ve been spending my day on the computer working and the more time on my computer, the less I want to spend writing. I’ve tried to write to several things, but my thoughts have just not been able to coalesce, and with the constant work, it’s just been easier to not write.

There’s just so much going on. Things I’m angry about and things I’m concerned about. Hurricane season has started and the new head of FEMA admitted to staffers that he was unaware of the existence of hurricane season. This is not something a person living in a hurricane zone wants to hear. There’s all of the nonsense with ICE and the ever-changing tariff news.

There’s just…EVERYTHING.

So that’s my excuse of my not writing.

I often use music to illustrate where my head’s at. I’m doing that again.

Today’s musical work is called “Classical Gas,” a guitar instrumental written and performed by Mason Williams and released in 1968. At the time, Williams was the head writer of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. But along with being an Emmy-winning comedy writer (and the guy who gave Steve Martin his first big break), Williams was also a folk music performer who cowrote the theme to the show.

Williams was the person who created the Pat Paulsen for President campaign for the Smothers Brothers show and later wrote The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and Saturday Night Live.

There are several things I like about this song: there’s the quiet acoustic start relying on Williams’s fingerpicking. The melody slowly builds with as slight orchestration enters then there’s the cacophony that arises when the when the whole orchestra kicks in. The song speeds up to a swell of noise, drums, horns, violins, all anchored by Williams’s intricate guitar work before slowly fading back to the guitar.

Williams performed the work often on the Smothers Brothers show (he would end up winning multiple Grammys) and it became a huge hit. The original piece was just an acoustic work before Williams went to work with Mike Post, then a musical arranger who worked with the famous Wrecking Crew of LA-based session players who were the instrumental geniuses behind much of the greatest pop songs of the 1960s and 1970s (Post would later become known as the composer of the themes for The Rockford Files, Hill Street Blues, Magnum P.I., L.A. Law, and The Greatest American Hero amongst many others), and Wrecking Crew musicians were part of the orchestra backing Williams on “Classical Gas.”

Then there’s this video that Williams had commissioned to go with the song called “3000 Years of Art.” It’s a video montage that was commissioned by an experimental filmmaker named Dan McLaughlin. During the playing of the song, 3000 years of art flash past the viewer, a kaleidoscopic three minutes of colors, images, faces, forms.

And thus you get an idea of what my head has been like these past several weeks. Trying to grasp on to one image as hundreds more flash by, comprehending yet not comprehending. Wanting it all to slow down yet eager for what’s next.

“Classical Gas” has been covered by many musicians, perhaps most famously by former Wrecking Crew member, pop and country music superstar, and the man who hired Williams to write on his variety show, Glen Campbell.

So let me try and relax and get my head back straight.