Kim and I have very different reading styles. Her dresser is covered with stacks of novels waiting to be read, next to a flashlight so she can keep reading after I fall a sleep. She jumps into the novels and canb read them a novel at a time. Me? My computer screen has dozens of tabs open, as I hop from Facebook to Twitter and Google+. There are blogs and news stories I hop between. During those rare times that I actually try to read a novel, I typically read them about a page at a time. After a few sentences I have to pause and wonder. Social media is probably better suited to my adult ADD mind.

So, Kim has already finished reading Scott Alarik’s “Revival: A Folk Music Novel” which she picked up at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Me? I’ve been working on it for a while, and am only on page sixty. There is so much in there that I want to savor.

Yet, to me, it isn’t about the story or the characters. Nathan, Kit, Ferguson, Jackie, Murph, Ryder, Randy? Sure, they are not “based upon, or intended to resemble, any person living or dead”. Yet they do resemble so many of the people that I see every year at Falcon Ridge, the people that gather up at The Longue on Thursday night, or at the Main Stage on Friday afternoon during the Emerging Artist Showcase. They are the people that I talk with as I head from the dance stage to the workshop stage. They are my people.

No, there is something else, more important running just below the surface. It is the lectures of Ferguson and Nathan, and the underlying story.

Ferguson again closed his eyes and spoke in a measured cadence. “As near as I can tell, the difference between art and craft is that art is always trying to tell the truth. Any old chair is not art but a Shaker chair is. Why? Because a Shaker chair tells us something about the people who built it, who they were, what they believed, how they lived their lives.”

Ferguson opened his eyes, smiled at Ryder, and said, “That Texas guy made me wonder if there was anything he really wanted to say about himself. Anything true, anything real. Anything that made him so sad or happy or pissed-off that he wanted to shout it out loud to see if anybody else felt the same way.”

He gently poked Ryder’s chest with his finger. “Doesn’t anything piss you off like that, so much that you want to howl it for the whole world to hear?”

“Like what?” Ryder squeaked. He was in way over his head.

“Like what?” Ferguson bellowed, then reined himself in. Jackie cleared her through to keep from laughing. Nathan smiled at her.

Ferguson knows folk music, but it is more than just about folk music. It is about writing, about art, about living your life. It resonates with me.

There are times that I have been so mad as I write blog posts, my hands shake. I have to steady myself. There are times that I have been so sad, that I struggle to keep back my tears as I write. There is an old image I have about writing, something about opening up a vein and letting it flow on the paper. But I write on my computer, so it is more like hooking a USB port directly into my nervous system and feeling all of my energy drain out of me into my blog posts.

To me, that is what Alarik is writing about. Whether you want to be a good folk musician, a good blog, or just a good person, you really need to read, and ponder this novel.

Later on, there is a brief line, easily skipped over if you read the novel too quickly. “Folk music taught him that our most ordinary mornings can be the stuff of song.” The same applies to any good writing, and especially to blog posts.

Yeah, I try to pump out a blog post every day. Sometimes, it is just exercise, keeping my mind and my typing fingers nimble. Other times, I just can’t stop writing. Alarik’s novel drives me to keep on writing.