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-----------------------------------------
Poetry of the Strings - ©2022 by (((Trevor Patrick)))
--{further adventures in edible-assisted
guitar praxis}--
DAY 1: (Famous Studio Chatter
& The Global Elephant-in-the-Room)
One thing all Hucksters
have in common
no matter what
their racket of choice//
their flavour of snake-oil:
Be it
the (g)rape of Religious Extremism
or Le Sav(E.U./I.O.U.)r Grenade
of Nationalism, fermented
to pure-Abs(inth/stininc/trus)e
Toxicity --
-- or, perhaps
the banana/lemon
pow(d)er-lines
of the disco-mirrored
Voulez-Vous
money-money-money
get-rich-quick
pyramid
-- is that they all
learned to tap into
a base, human instinct,
and flex a unique
(and deliciously sensuous)
but-rather-underused
muscle
Tom Petty knew the truth
that sometimes,
even losers get lucky.
Or maybe it's
just the normal
noises in here.
Of course, in the end,
one of the most base,
human impulses
is the burning lust
for revenge
'cuz freedom takes
too much work.
And far-too-many people
take the words of
Soviet Dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
far-too-much out of context
when they distill them down
to the neat-and-tidy Maxim:
"Freedom is not free,
free men are not equal,
and equal men are not free."
Nuance?
What's that?
Isn't that the Duty-Free
shop at the airport?
But we refuse to accept such
a stark truism.
Not unless
it
--{directly}--
benefits us.
Funny the places
your head goes,
when the heavy-water soap-scum
of the mental bathtub
become akin to tree-rings --
-- and constant distraction
of barely-behaving dog
is certainly not helping,
as I fight an uphill battle
of trying to slip away
into the poetry of the strings.
DAY 2: (Weltschmerz, Nuclear Paranoia
& Midlife-Crisis Angst)
Many of us,
who came of age
in the Eighties
looked to the
(ultimately empty)
Future Promises
that things can only get better
like in that Chernobyl-radiant
Howard Jones song.
Few of us had
any real idea
or appreciation
(after all, how could we?)
||
||
(like Watterson pointed out
in a Calvin & Hobbes Strip
that Halcyonity is
only awarded
Retroactively.
The 20/20 hindsight
stomach-dropping
realisation
of many of us disaffected
Gen Xers
is that we were all
looking ahead
at the mirage of
ephemeral, bright futures
but unable to truly //grok//
that we were already on top.
...When we still could dream big
of wonderful things,
before the harsher,
and far more uncompromising facts
of so-called "adulthood"
were nasty-surprise-revealed
whether we were eating dust
in the so-called rat race,
or the far-smaller-number,
who somehow found ourselves
on a gilded hamster wheel...
Like a long-ago graffito on a bridge
on a northward road
---out---
of my long-moved-on
-and-good-damned-RIDDANCE
home-town
that said:
ONLY DEATH IS REAL
Yeah, heavy, profound shit
to the eyes and mind
of an angsty eighties
loser pre-teen,
but almost laughable
pop-philosophy bullshit
to the jaded,
midlife-crisis
and very much physically, at least,
post-teen,
who has nevertheless
barely-even-gotten-started
in the adulthood-long-process
of
to poach a great lyric from
Carole Pope:
(getting) "slapped in the face
by the real world."
And ultimately,
books and poetry
did little to
protect this particular rock/island
which ultimately proved
as solid as crumbly
sandstone...
Still more dreams
and flights of fancy
and hopes
that you
dare not even speak
because to say it
is to slay it.
Yeah, all those beautiful
unfulfilled dreams
of ultimately
unrealistic things,
and finding
some sort
of unquantifiable refuge,
in the
poetry of the strings.
DAY 3: (Cool, Cruel Summer)
Cooler-than-usual
Summer -
first emerging
from the
two-and-a-half-years
to flatten the curve
emerging from
the doldrums of plague
directly 'twixt wars
and rumours of wars
...and chilly/miserable
lingering rains
patter-dancing
onto the surface
of the now-too-cold
childhood swimming hole
in
><X><kaleidoscope-eyes><X><
myriad
of 3-2-1 Contact
water-dripping,
surface-tension-breaking rings
and bruised-but-healing
sense of
human purpose and worth--
--thick callused fingertips
making their loving caresses
as once again,
I'm swept up
in the poetry of the strings...
Yeah,
50 mg of CBD
'cuz I
can't change the fact
that these
are 50-year-old hands
"I'm tryin'-a work with, heah!"
and force them to do things
I should have
taught them in my
teens and twenties.
Still,
once the aches are deadened,
they're replaced with
a sensuality echo,
the near absence of pain
unique and luxurious enough
to almost feel indulgent:
Like fingers caressing the strings
might be some
transcendent, symbolic...
Some entirely spiritual
way of makin' love
maybe takin'
the long way home.
'Cuz just like Ringo
I got blisters on my fingers!
Yet that don't mean a thing...
'Cuz right now all I need
is the Poetry of the Strings.
DAY 4: (Memories of Lion's Head
& Vultures Landing on Mars)
A puffy-cloud sky
deceptively-innocent
after two days
of dreary rain
suddenly makes me long
for the Garafraxa Road
stretching its ponderous,
gently-curving way Northward
through forests, fields & streams
clinging to the worn-down,
low-hills sculpted
by the retreat
of the last ice age
=
=
=
even as I pass through
the gradually-smaller
town and villages...
From Fergus
through Arthur
through Kenilworth
'cross the Saugeen River
up to the crest of Mount Forest
and into Grey County--
--with Shearwater as the soundtrack:
Jonathan Meiburg's soaring vocals
nearly as pure as a
Spirit Coyote
of the Texas Hills Country
making a mere, human voice
transcend
into something
truly otherworldly,
and as the hills get
a little higher, still,
between Mount Forest
and Varney,
and on into Durham,
where the Old Durham Road
meets up with Garafraxa,
now deep into
Mennonite Country
and on to Williamsford
with its pie factory
and old mill
converted into
bookstore & cafe
and little fish
fan themselves lazily
in the pastoral
and still waters
of the old millpond,
below the little
kissing-bridge
between the mill
and its gravel
parking lot...
And Garafraxa blesses me
during my short detour
inside of the bookstore,
as I find a copy of
"The Eastern Panther"
by Bruce Davis.
Then, back onto
the Panther's Backbone
as I continue my northward journey
into Chatsworth,
where the old Sydenham Road
joins Garafraxa as well.
And somewhere along the way,
Jonathan's spirit-coyote
cries-lifted-into-song
of the burning,
midlife crisis
hard-question//realisation
of whether (I/you) have
indeed spent
all of (your/my) life
inside a chrysalis,
writhing?"
even as I approach
the Huron Coast
at the bottom of
Georgian Bay,
and skirt around
Owen Sound towards
the Escarpment
and the Peninsula,
through my father's birthplace
of Springmount,
and on into Hepworth--
--where I'm
presented with the choice
of looking to the West
to Sauble Beach and Falls
or North to Wiarton
and beyond...
To the ancient, stone lion's head
or the flower pot cliffs
of Tobermory at the northernmost tip.
A trip taken
in the time of plague
lockout-starved
for inspiration
and in desperation
to change
the direction
of the story
and suddenly,
the haunting,
opening piano chords
of "The Snow Leopard"
as Garafraxa enters
the peninsula, proper
Niagara Escarpment
black rocks splitting, wide
and just as the
Snow Leopard belongs
to the Himalaya,
and the Himalaya
belongs to the Snow Leopard
So too did the Escarpment
belong to the ancient lion,
and the ancient lion
to the escarpment
though now he sleeps,
his visage as
weathered stone,
and
halo//mane
of gnarled
cliffside cedar and birch.
'Cuz as the world moved on,
and as ages passed,
his smaller, more lithe
descendants eventually
had their own turn
at inheriting these lands--
--cut through by
the road that still belongs
to Garafraxa...
He of many names:
Cougar, Puma, Panther,
Mountain Lion...
And after the rise and fall of man
the echo-ghosts of
Garafraxa
will still
belong to the Road.
And just as the ashes
of a now-pas't
Cousin of Garafraxa
who was a Drifter through my life
(and I likewise allowed
to all-too-briefly & infrequently)
join the same Drifter
on his own journey
along the Garafraxa Road...
Once you reach a certain age,
memories are much harder
to tie down
not like how crisp
and vivid
they often seemed
as a kid;
yet looking across
that white-stone beach,
and the quiet, blue-water harbour
opening into the bay,
and now once again
through sepia-toned-but-still-vivid
memories
of yet another year-on
(What's Another Year?)
in both time and distance,
I've gotten further
(maybe too far)
away.
This innocent,
puffy-cloud day
brings more feelings and memories
fish-eye lens-blurring into
gradually sharper view
and the echoes of looking upon
the ice-age-ancient
stone visage
of that mighty, sleeping king...
And I hold onto it,
for just as long
as my all-too-often
world-weary mind
will allow it
And as my fingers once again
try to coax out the sound
of the poetry of the strings.
DAY 5: (Ignoramus/Ignor-Am-I?
// More Canine Interruptions)
Like one of those
unique Midlife Crisis frustrations,
when you've been waiting & waiting...
& waiting some more...
& when you finally can wait no longer,
that's when you
finally receive an answer...
...that you need to
continue waiting,
lest you lose your place in the queue.
even with the sinking realisation
that you're so far back,
that there is likely no way
that your turn will ever come up...
...the sinking feeling
that it will be all for naught
(but-me-no-buts)
your own wasted time,
and the ignorance of
and distraction from
any missed alternate opportunities
that may have come up.
You put all your eggs
into one basket for far too long,
and even if you were
ignorant
"Ignorance makes no excuses,
only Ignor(ami/Am I?)"
(--just like a girl I knew in
Grammar School, who talked
non-stop like a Chatty Cathy
ceaselessly pulling her own string,
and whom the other girls cruelly
called "Ignor-Amy", deliberately
slurring Amy's real name)
("Ignor-Amy", whom
I later discovered was an only-child
raised by a neglectful,
drunkard father, that ignored her,
save for providing
basic necessities, and
occasionally slur-shouting at her...)
(...and the only reason
that Amy lived with her father
was that she had no other family members
even remotely capable of caring for her).
So, certainly
Ignor-Amy had an excuse,
but ignorami such as myself?
Well, we have none.
So...
ignorance
that other possible baskets
even exist?
Yeah, still no excuse
for all-eggs-in-one
...basket...
and...
...well...
...to be fair...
--no more than in
any courtroom of
Render Unto Caesar Laws,
could we expect
Life and Fate to accept
ignorance as an excuse
in the Divine Court
of Render Unto G-d.
And the chill, dreary rain
has returned today,
as an echo of Autumn
even towards the end
of so-called "Spring"
And in
persistently-misbehaving
dog-interrupted
guitar practice
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*
because, apparently it's
his sacred *duty*
within-the-Pack
to distract me,
after all.
"Let me sing you
the songs of my people!"
(in as demanding of a)
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*
(as I can possibly muster!)
...and
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*
...I think of clumsy metaphors
during halting attempts to
feel the poetry of the strings
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*!
*whiiiiiiiine*...
(Yet another False: "I gotta go!" alarm,
which is, in actuality, an: "I'm boooorred
and I wanna play!" klaxon)
And I feel as morose
as the quivering poplar
dripping/cold/pouting
as I take the dog
outside for his
forced-interruption --
--{Instead of the Boy, Who Cried 'Wolf',
I have the dog that cried: I'm gonna go
on the floor unless you take me out,
right this instant!"}--
-- or instead of morose,
perhaos as stoic &
vaguely-dignified
as the forlorn
blue spruce,
lichen-encrusted
and needles drooping...
But of course,
the high-maintenance
sugar maples
next door
have little care,
having already finished
bleeding their saps
for yet another year.
Day 6: (Plague and War Crush Out Another Cigarette,
& Poke The Bear)
I capo up to 3,
whilst thinking of
Lover//Loner Marty Balin,
of the Jefferson Airplane and Starship
from its earliest flight,
and whose sole similarity to myself,
is that we both like(d)
to spend time in St. Augustine.
Singing those longing lyrics,
and equally-plaintive single notes
that were added by Jerry Garcia.
And perhaps, truth to be told,
I have a few more
-->>similarities<<--
to Captain Trips
what, with my scruffy clothes,
Trotsky-Getting-His-Brain-Picked
glasses,
my beer gut,
and somewhat similar hair.
Especially since i stopped
cutting it during COVID
maybe in some:
"Wandering, aimlessly,
in the Sinai Desert"
metaphor born of
Midlife Crisis
loneliness and depression
in that two-weeks-to-two
and-a-half-years
to-flatten-the-curve
Time of Plague--
--with that white horse & horseman
wildly galloping all the way
back to Sleepy Hollow,
and I realise that
in 'Fifty-and-Single'
perhaps there is a unique,
frosty wistfulness
--{that can be brought to bear}--
when singing and playing a song
like "Today".
--{and as hard is can be to bear}--
--{like Grizzly Man getting eaten by a bear}--
--{though not nearly so bad as
an entire country being eaten by a bear}--
(yet again, there, but for the Grace of G-d, go I).
there is only one possible remedy --
one possible reassurance
on the very edge of falling
into my (petty-in-a-larger-context)
depressive pit--
--I need
the musical equivalent of a
security blanket & sippy-cup
and even Marty and Jerry
are no longer comforting enough,
and I call back
to the fragile gift of Daniel Johnston
and Innocent Jeremiah,
who, alien-frog,
friend-in-need greets me:
"Hi, how are you?
Good to see you again!"
It's more like I've always found myself
on the wrong side of
Death Cab For Cutie's "Someday You Will be Loved"
but thankfully not quite at the stage of
"I will follow you into the dark."
But I'm never quite sure
what inspiration might arrive;
what my fickle and capricious muse
might condescend to bring
Even as warm up, whilst waiting
for a medical edible to kick in
and I can gradually get myself lost
in the poetry of the strings...
-----------------------------------------
Poetry of the Strings - ©2022 by (((Trevor Patrick)))
--{further adventures in edible-assisted
guitar praxis}--
DAY 1: (Famous Studio Chatter
& The Global Elephant-in-the-Room)
One thing all Hucksters
have in common
no matter what
their racket of choice//
their flavour of snake-oil:
Be it
the (g)rape of Religious Extremism
or Le Sav(E.U./I.O.U.)r Grenade
of Nationalism, fermented
to pure-Abs(inth/stininc/trus)e
Toxicity --
-- or, perhaps
the banana/lemon
pow(d)er-lines
of the disco-mirrored
Voulez-Vous
money-money-money
get-rich-quick
pyramid
-- is that they all
learned to tap into
a base, human instinct,
and flex a unique
(and deliciously sensuous)
but-rather-underused
muscle
Tom Petty knew the truth
that sometimes,
even losers get lucky.
Or maybe it's
just the normal
noises in here.
Of course, in the end,
one of the most base,
human impulses
is the burning lust
for revenge
'cuz freedom takes
too much work.
And far-too-many people
take the words of
Soviet Dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
far-too-much out of context
when they distill them down
to the neat-and-tidy Maxim:
"Freedom is not free,
free men are not equal,
and equal men are not free."
Nuance?
What's that?
Isn't that the Duty-Free
shop at the airport?
But we refuse to accept such
a stark truism.
Not unless
it
--{directly}--
benefits us.
Funny the places
your head goes,
when the heavy-water soap-scum
of the mental bathtub
become akin to tree-rings --
-- and constant distraction
of barely-behaving dog
is certainly not helping,
as I fight an uphill battle
of trying to slip away
into the poetry of the strings.
DAY 2: (Weltschmerz, Nuclear Paranoia
& Midlife-Crisis Angst)
Many of us,
who came of age
in the Eighties
looked to the
(ultimately empty)
Future Promises
that things can only get better
like in that Chernobyl-radiant
Howard Jones song.
Few of us had
any real idea
or appreciation
(after all, how could we?)
||
||
(like Watterson pointed out
in a Calvin & Hobbes Strip
that Halcyonity is
only awarded
Retroactively.
The 20/20 hindsight
stomach-dropping
realisation
of many of us disaffected
Gen Xers
is that we were all
looking ahead
at the mirage of
ephemeral, bright futures
but unable to truly //grok//
that we were already on top.
...When we still could dream big
of wonderful things,
before the harsher,
and far more uncompromising facts
of so-called "adulthood"
were nasty-surprise-revealed
whether we were eating dust
in the so-called rat race,
or the far-smaller-number,
who somehow found ourselves
on a gilded hamster wheel...
Like a long-ago graffito on a bridge
on a northward road
---out---
of my long-moved-on
-and-good-damned-RIDDANCE
home-town
that said:
ONLY DEATH IS REAL
Yeah, heavy, profound shit
to the eyes and mind
of an angsty eighties
loser pre-teen,
but almost laughable
pop-philosophy bullshit
to the jaded,
midlife-crisis
and very much physically, at least,
post-teen,
who has nevertheless
barely-even-gotten-started
in the adulthood-long-process
of
to poach a great lyric from
Carole Pope:
(getting) "slapped in the face
by the real world."
And ultimately,
books and poetry
did little to
protect this particular rock/island
which ultimately proved
as solid as crumbly
sandstone...
Still more dreams
and flights of fancy
and hopes
that you
dare not even speak
because to say it
is to slay it.
Yeah, all those beautiful
unfulfilled dreams
of ultimately
unrealistic things,
and finding
some sort
of unquantifiable refuge,
in the
poetry of the strings.
DAY 3: (Cool, Cruel Summer)
Cooler-than-usual
Summer -
first emerging
from the
two-and-a-half-years
to flatten the curve
emerging from
the doldrums of plague
directly 'twixt wars
and rumours of wars
...and chilly/miserable
lingering rains
patter-dancing
onto the surface
of the now-too-cold
childhood swimming hole
in
><X><kaleidoscope-eyes><X><
myriad
of 3-2-1 Contact
water-dripping,
surface-tension-breaking rings
and bruised-but-healing
sense of
human purpose and worth--
--thick callused fingertips
making their loving caresses
as once again,
I'm swept up
in the poetry of the strings...
Yeah,
50 mg of CBD
'cuz I
can't change the fact
that these
are 50-year-old hands
"I'm tryin'-a work with, heah!"
and force them to do things
I should have
taught them in my
teens and twenties.
Still,
once the aches are deadened,
they're replaced with
a sensuality echo,
the near absence of pain
unique and luxurious enough
to almost feel indulgent:
Like fingers caressing the strings
might be some
transcendent, symbolic...
Some entirely spiritual
way of makin' love
maybe takin'
the long way home.
'Cuz just like Ringo
I got blisters on my fingers!
Yet that don't mean a thing...
'Cuz right now all I need
is the Poetry of the Strings.
DAY 4: (Memories of Lion's Head
& Vultures Landing on Mars)
A puffy-cloud sky
deceptively-innocent
after two days
of dreary rain
suddenly makes me long
for the Garafraxa Road
stretching its ponderous,
gently-curving way Northward
through forests, fields & streams
clinging to the worn-down,
low-hills sculpted
by the retreat
of the last ice age
=
=
=
even as I pass through
the gradually-smaller
town and villages...
From Fergus
through Arthur
through Kenilworth
'cross the Saugeen River
up to the crest of Mount Forest
and into Grey County--
--with Shearwater as the soundtrack:
Jonathan Meiburg's soaring vocals
nearly as pure as a
Spirit Coyote
of the Texas Hills Country
making a mere, human voice
transcend
into something
truly otherworldly,
and as the hills get
a little higher, still,
between Mount Forest
and Varney,
and on into Durham,
where the Old Durham Road
meets up with Garafraxa,
now deep into
Mennonite Country
and on to Williamsford
with its pie factory
and old mill
converted into
bookstore & cafe
and little fish
fan themselves lazily
in the pastoral
and still waters
of the old millpond,
below the little
kissing-bridge
between the mill
and its gravel
parking lot...
And Garafraxa blesses me
during my short detour
inside of the bookstore,
as I find a copy of
"The Eastern Panther"
by Bruce Davis.
Then, back onto
the Panther's Backbone
as I continue my northward journey
into Chatsworth,
where the old Sydenham Road
joins Garafraxa as well.
And somewhere along the way,
Jonathan's spirit-coyote
cries-lifted-into-song
of the burning,
midlife crisis
hard-question//realisation
of whether (I/you) have
indeed spent
all of (your/my) life
inside a chrysalis,
writhing?"
even as I approach
the Huron Coast
at the bottom of
Georgian Bay,
and skirt around
Owen Sound towards
the Escarpment
and the Peninsula,
through my father's birthplace
of Springmount,
and on into Hepworth--
--where I'm
presented with the choice
of looking to the West
to Sauble Beach and Falls
or North to Wiarton
and beyond...
To the ancient, stone lion's head
or the flower pot cliffs
of Tobermory at the northernmost tip.
A trip taken
in the time of plague
lockout-starved
for inspiration
and in desperation
to change
the direction
of the story
and suddenly,
the haunting,
opening piano chords
of "The Snow Leopard"
as Garafraxa enters
the peninsula, proper
Niagara Escarpment
black rocks splitting, wide
and just as the
Snow Leopard belongs
to the Himalaya,
and the Himalaya
belongs to the Snow Leopard
So too did the Escarpment
belong to the ancient lion,
and the ancient lion
to the escarpment
though now he sleeps,
his visage as
weathered stone,
and
halo//mane
of gnarled
cliffside cedar and birch.
'Cuz as the world moved on,
and as ages passed,
his smaller, more lithe
descendants eventually
had their own turn
at inheriting these lands--
--cut through by
the road that still belongs
to Garafraxa...
He of many names:
Cougar, Puma, Panther,
Mountain Lion...
And after the rise and fall of man
the echo-ghosts of
Garafraxa
will still
belong to the Road.
And just as the ashes
of a now-pas't
Cousin of Garafraxa
who was a Drifter through my life
(and I likewise allowed
to all-too-briefly & infrequently)
join the same Drifter
on his own journey
along the Garafraxa Road...
Once you reach a certain age,
memories are much harder
to tie down
not like how crisp
and vivid
they often seemed
as a kid;
yet looking across
that white-stone beach,
and the quiet, blue-water harbour
opening into the bay,
and now once again
through sepia-toned-but-still-vivid
memories
of yet another year-on
(What's Another Year?)
in both time and distance,
I've gotten further
(maybe too far)
away.
This innocent,
puffy-cloud day
brings more feelings and memories
fish-eye lens-blurring into
gradually sharper view
and the echoes of looking upon
the ice-age-ancient
stone visage
of that mighty, sleeping king...
And I hold onto it,
for just as long
as my all-too-often
world-weary mind
will allow it
And as my fingers once again
try to coax out the sound
of the poetry of the strings.
DAY 5: (Ignoramus/Ignor-Am-I?
// More Canine Interruptions)
Like one of those
unique Midlife Crisis frustrations,
when you've been waiting & waiting...
& waiting some more...
& when you finally can wait no longer,
that's when you
finally receive an answer...
...that you need to
continue waiting,
lest you lose your place in the queue.
even with the sinking realisation
that you're so far back,
that there is likely no way
that your turn will ever come up...
...the sinking feeling
that it will be all for naught
(but-me-no-buts)
your own wasted time,
and the ignorance of
and distraction from
any missed alternate opportunities
that may have come up.
You put all your eggs
into one basket for far too long,
and even if you were
ignorant
"Ignorance makes no excuses,
only Ignor(ami/Am I?)"
(--just like a girl I knew in
Grammar School, who talked
non-stop like a Chatty Cathy
ceaselessly pulling her own string,
and whom the other girls cruelly
called "Ignor-Amy", deliberately
slurring Amy's real name)
("Ignor-Amy", whom
I later discovered was an only-child
raised by a neglectful,
drunkard father, that ignored her,
save for providing
basic necessities, and
occasionally slur-shouting at her...)
(...and the only reason
that Amy lived with her father
was that she had no other family members
even remotely capable of caring for her).
So, certainly
Ignor-Amy had an excuse,
but ignorami such as myself?
Well, we have none.
So...
ignorance
that other possible baskets
even exist?
Yeah, still no excuse
for all-eggs-in-one
...basket...
and...
...well...
...to be fair...
--no more than in
any courtroom of
Render Unto Caesar Laws,
could we expect
Life and Fate to accept
ignorance as an excuse
in the Divine Court
of Render Unto G-d.
And the chill, dreary rain
has returned today,
as an echo of Autumn
even towards the end
of so-called "Spring"
And in
persistently-misbehaving
dog-interrupted
guitar practice
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*
because, apparently it's
his sacred *duty*
within-the-Pack
to distract me,
after all.
"Let me sing you
the songs of my people!"
(in as demanding of a)
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*
(as I can possibly muster!)
...and
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*
...I think of clumsy metaphors
during halting attempts to
feel the poetry of the strings
*BARK* *BARK* *BARK*!
*whiiiiiiiine*...
(Yet another False: "I gotta go!" alarm,
which is, in actuality, an: "I'm boooorred
and I wanna play!" klaxon)
And I feel as morose
as the quivering poplar
dripping/cold/pouting
as I take the dog
outside for his
forced-interruption --
--{Instead of the Boy, Who Cried 'Wolf',
I have the dog that cried: I'm gonna go
on the floor unless you take me out,
right this instant!"}--
-- or instead of morose,
perhaos as stoic &
vaguely-dignified
as the forlorn
blue spruce,
lichen-encrusted
and needles drooping...
But of course,
the high-maintenance
sugar maples
next door
have little care,
having already finished
bleeding their saps
for yet another year.
Day 6: (Plague and War Crush Out Another Cigarette,
& Poke The Bear)
I capo up to 3,
whilst thinking of
Lover//Loner Marty Balin,
of the Jefferson Airplane and Starship
from its earliest flight,
and whose sole similarity to myself,
is that we both like(d)
to spend time in St. Augustine.
Singing those longing lyrics,
and equally-plaintive single notes
that were added by Jerry Garcia.
And perhaps, truth to be told,
I have a few more
-->>similarities<<--
to Captain Trips
what, with my scruffy clothes,
Trotsky-Getting-His-Brain-Picked
glasses,
my beer gut,
and somewhat similar hair.
Especially since i stopped
cutting it during COVID
maybe in some:
"Wandering, aimlessly,
in the Sinai Desert"
metaphor born of
Midlife Crisis
loneliness and depression
in that two-weeks-to-two
and-a-half-years
to-flatten-the-curve
Time of Plague--
--with that white horse & horseman
wildly galloping all the way
back to Sleepy Hollow,
and I realise that
in 'Fifty-and-Single'
perhaps there is a unique,
frosty wistfulness
--{that can be brought to bear}--
when singing and playing a song
like "Today".
--{and as hard is can be to bear}--
--{like Grizzly Man getting eaten by a bear}--
--{though not nearly so bad as
an entire country being eaten by a bear}--
(yet again, there, but for the Grace of G-d, go I).
there is only one possible remedy --
one possible reassurance
on the very edge of falling
into my (petty-in-a-larger-context)
depressive pit--
--I need
the musical equivalent of a
security blanket & sippy-cup
and even Marty and Jerry
are no longer comforting enough,
and I call back
to the fragile gift of Daniel Johnston
and Innocent Jeremiah,
who, alien-frog,
friend-in-need greets me:
"Hi, how are you?
Good to see you again!"
It's more like I've always found myself
on the wrong side of
Death Cab For Cutie's "Someday You Will be Loved"
but thankfully not quite at the stage of
"I will follow you into the dark."
But I'm never quite sure
what inspiration might arrive;
what my fickle and capricious muse
might condescend to bring
Even as warm up, whilst waiting
for a medical edible to kick in
and I can gradually get myself lost
in the poetry of the strings...
GENERAL NOTES:
These are going to be quite lengthy and exhaustive, so, at the outset, for folks, who would prefer the Cliff's Notes, {TL;DR} summary, the first paragraph of what continues below should suffice.
{TL;DR} This piece is a stream of consciousness experiment I decided to do, when I felt unusually starved for inspiration. Essentially, I tried to deliberately write down various interesting thoughts that came to me on those days, when the aches and pains (especially in my knees) are bad enough, that I will decide to consume a medical cannabis edible before embarking upon guitar practice, adding to the scratch pad, where appropriate, both before and during practice, my left hand often continuing to tap and/or fret its way up and down the neck, even as my right hand would briefly pick up a pen, whenever the urge struck. / {TL;DR}
(long-assed recitation for those who possess the patience):
As with a few previous pieces I have written and/or thought of during such altered states, I typically prefer a THC/CBD mixture that's lighter on the THC and heavier on the CBD. (For folks, who aren't aware, THC is the cannabinoid that gets you baked, whereas the CBD has excellent pain-management properties, but offers very little in the way of psychoactive effects). Being that I am trying to learn guitar using fifty-year-old hands, as opposed to the far more youthful hands that most (good) guitarists start learning on, (at a more sensible age than 40+), the more I can stave off the cramping, and the various aches and pains in my hands, (as well as the aforementioned ones in my knees, and occasionally my lower back as well) when I practice, the more pleasant and enjoyable the session, and the more productive, overall, it will generally be, (i.e. the point, where mere 'practice' gains that extra nuance, and becomes more akin to the Platonic/Aristotelean concept of: "Praxis" (πρᾶξις)
The reason I generally prefer the lower THC / higher CBD mixture is that there is a fine line, where the lowered inhibitions of being just a little bit baked is far more useful and productive than being a little bit (or even considerably) MORE baked, hence, I've found that my sweet-spot is a 10 mg THC/40-50 mg CBD mixture, depending upon how bad the physical aches and pains I am dealing with are on a particular, given day.
(briefly steps up, onto soapbox):
...and, please note that I am not promoting or advocating any particular substance to anyone; especially if you just so happen to live in a place, where it is illegal. I am only talking about what seems to work best for me. Your own body, and your own choices are strictly your own business, and not mine, and I quite honestly prefer to not try and tell other people how to live their lives, especially, when I have a hard enough time living my own. :P
(/steps off soapbox)
Still, once the edible starts to perform its magick, sometimes the thoughts that come to me don't always have a lot to do with the music that I am playing, (at least not directly), and often, my mind can run on two or more tracks at once. Hence, from this point forward, I think it will be easier for everyone concerned if I am to split my comments up into the corresponding edible-assisted guitar practice days they correspond to, even if, occasionally, certain ideas and concepts might somewhat bleed over from one particular session to another.
Oh, and one more thing before we move on: Sometimes bits and pieces from the songs I was playing during each day's respective practice session, will occasionally creep more directly into the words. To the best of my knowledge, I have done my best to stay well-below the threshold for "fair usage". Still, I encourage readers to go and listen to the songs in question, whether on your online player of choice, or a video on YouTube, and perhaps toss some royalties towards the original artists in question. I figure that's the least I can offer in thanks for the inspiration...
DAY 1: (Famous Studio Chatter & The Global Elephant-in-the-Room)
On the day I decided to launch this experiment, I found myself thinking of a number of things, including some instances of studio-chatter that wound up being preserved on a few well-known recordings, and, which are musical easter eggs, that have, in and of themselves, often become legendary. One in particular that I have mentioned includes a female voice declaring: "It's just the normal noises in here!" which is heard right before the start of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' song: "Even the Losers" off of their 1979 album: "Damn The Torpedoes".
According to the wiki article for that particular album, the voice was that of Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell's wife Marcie, after he had recorded a demo of his guitar part, whilst at home, and was complaining to his wife about the noise from a nearby washing machine bleeding its way into the recording.
Another instance I have quoted (mostly on a follow-up day), is Ringo Starr's exasperated shout of: "I've got blisters on my fingers!" at the end of one of (numerous) takes of "Helter Skelter" during the recording process for the White Album.
With regards to the general train-of-thought that my ideas seemed to be running along: Well, apart from the actual theory and technique of the practice itself, there is also maybe a universal, ongoing theme that's summed up quite nicely in something I once read in an old Swamp Thing comic back in the Eighties, where Swampy is pondering about all the things that humans make most readily (and in descending order), namely:
We make noise, we make war, and (very occasionally) we might make love.
And or course, in this current reality of mid-2022 AD, there's always the Blue & Yellow Elephant in the Room -- There, but for the Grace of G-d, go I. No matter how serious I might feel my various midlife crisis gripes and grumps to be, they tend to very seriously pale beside the current reality of thousands of people, who are having to fight and die in a war...
There really is that sobering realisation that my real Privilege is that, at the moment, I am here, and not there, and there's still one hell of a long way that things can descend into 'bad' before "here" could become even one tenth as bad as they've currently got it over "there", at present.
Once again, there, but for the Grace of G-d, go I.
Practice Highlights:
"Under the Milky Way" by The Church
Vocals and Guitar: Samick LW-015G Dreadnought, aka "Darling Devotchka", pick-strummed -- standard tuning (i.e., "Eddie Ate Dynamite. Good-Bye, Eddie!")
"Summer Wine" by Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
Vocals and Guitar: Takamine New Yorker GY11ME-NS Parlour Guitar, still unnamed, fingerstyle -- standard tuning.
DAY 2: (Weltschmerz, Nuclear Paranoia & Midlife-Crisis Angst)
On the second day of practice, the global elephant still very much remained in the room, perhaps even looking at me a little more balefully and/or reproachfully than the previous day.
"Seriously, dude? You can noodle around on a guitar at a time like this?!?"
And, well... Perhaps for good measure, I also felt echoes of the same sort of nuclear paranoia that I remembered so well from the depths of the Cold War, and once again asking myself:
"What's the chance that someone might just decide to push that Big Red Button® now, and get it over with?"
I am often reminded of an old Cabaret Voltaire lyric from their 1987 song: "Don't Argue".
"It's not right to leave everyone wonderin' how;
I say: 'If you're gonna drop it, then drop it now!'"
And, of course, there is always a counterpoint to this from the relentlessly positive Howard Jones, and his catchy-as-the-plague 1985 song: "Things Can Only Get Better." (if you're a fellow Gen-Xer, you're very welcome for that particular earworm), :P
I also spent a good chunk of the practice working on some Rick Beato fingerpicking exercises (seriously, that man is the YouTube guitar god. I have found his instructional videos more useful than anyone else out there, and I don't mind giving him a well-deserved plug. :) )
Once I get nice and warmed up on the fingerpicking, I try a bit of Simon & Garfunkel because, let's face it: Paul Simon is a beast at fingerstyle playing.
Practice Highlights:
"I am a Rock" by Simon & Garfunkel
Vocals and Guitar: Takamine New Yorker GY11ME-NS Parlour Guitar, still unnamed, fingerstyle -- standard tuning, capo 5.
Rick Beato Fingerpicking Exercises:
"The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel
Vocals and Guitar (Takamine New Yorker), fingerstyle -- standard tuning
"Tiger Blues" (original song/WIP)
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), tapped and pick-strummed -- standard tuning
twelve-bar blues, E7, A7, Bm7 with turnaround
DAY 3: (Cool, Cruel Summer)
Obviously, I found myself thinking of the Bananarama song "Cruel Summer", because for many reasons, we seem to currently find ourselves in a crueller one than usual (and, at least for Midwestern North America), so far a cooler than usual one, as well.
Indeed, I'm no longer quite so sure if Eliot was right about April being the cruellest month...
It seems both foot-stampingly unfair, yet at the same time depressingly logical that the first real summer beyond the COVID plague should bring yet another Horseman of the Apocalypse. I guess Famine and Death are most likely already waiting in the Green Room, with the ashtray already half-filled with chain-smoked cigarette butts...
Practice Highlights -
"Rooks" by Shearwater
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3
(Fool) If You Think it's Over by Chris Rea
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
Crazy Mary by Victoria Williams
(as covered by Pearl Jam)
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 5
DAY 4: (Memories of Lion's Head & Vultures Landing on Mars)
As the fourth day of this particular experiment was finally nice enough that I was able to practice outside after several days of cold and dreary rain, it felt like enough of a renewal that I found myself thinking of yet another previous artistic and general headspace renewal: Specifically the one I experienced during the midst of the COVID lockdowns, when I decided to make several road trips, during the Summer and Early Autumn of 2020, north along the old Garafraxa Road (Ontario Highway 6).
The Old Garafraxa Road cuts vaguely North-Northwest (NXNW) across Southwestern and Midwestern Ontario, mostly following the Niagara Peninsula northward from Lake Erie, and continuing all the way up to the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron, eventually across the ferry to Manitoulin Island, and then eventually to meet up with the Trans Canada Highway as it crosses the wide expanse of Northern Ontario.
If one is to follow the old trope of a map of Southern Ontario being superimposed onto a giant elephant, the Old Garafraxa Road traces a path roughly from the elephant's lower chest to the end of its tail. (The Manitoulin and Northern Ontario segments of Highway 6 are beyond the elephant's tail).
Likewise, those, who know about the Ontario Elephant also know that the fine folks of the Huron port city of Owen Sound (also along the Garafraxa Road), tend to get more than a little pissed-off to be reminded of just where, exactly Owen Sound is located on the elephant
On the trips I have made thus far, I only went as far as the Bruce Peninsula, visiting places such as Owen Sound at its Southeastern corner, and up the east side of the Peninsula, proper, through towns such as Springmount (which has deep connections to my father's side of the family), up through Shallow Lake and Hepworth, where one is presented with the choice of continuing westward to the Lake Side of the Peninsula, where likes Sauble Beach and Sauble Falls, or if one turns North, to continue along the Bay Side of the Peninsula, up through towns such as Clavering, Wiarton (home of a particular cannibalistic, babby-eating albino weather-predicting rodent), Mar, Ferndale and Lion's Head. If one continues still further north, there is also Miller Lake before Land's End at the flowerpot cliffs of Tobermory, and the aforementioned Ferry to Manitoulin.
The name "Garafraxa" is said to originate from an Aboriginal word for the large, North American cat known by many names, including: "Mountain Lion", "Panther, or "Cougar", and (supposedly) marks that particular area of ice-age-shaped fields and forests as the "Land of the Panther," who did indeed, at one point, roam freely throughout nearly all of Eastern North America. Hence, there is a very deep, spiritual symbolism in journeying northward through these gradually-less-tamed lands once ruled by Garafraxa... Even more still when one reaches Lion's Head, which is named for an Ice-Age stone, cliffside feature along the Huron Coast, which vaguely resembles the head of an ancient North American Cave Lion (Panthera Atrox), and who ruled these lands long before Garafraxa.
There was also some very heavy symbolism and symmetry at play, as I chose to undertake those trips whilst wearing a neck-chain with the small, silver vial containing the ashes of Drifter, who was a tame, captive cougar I worked with for a number of years as part of a zoological research project that was originally supposed to be part of my Master's Thesis.
Unfortunately, however, due to a lack of funding and several other issues, I ultimately got my M.Sc. for a different project, although I was still able to continue the original research on a smaller scale, (and privately-funded), with a view to eventually publishing the data if possible. Both I, and my main associate (namely the cougar-in-question's legal owner), continued collecting data until Drifter eventually passed due to age-related issues in November of 2015.
Hence, for a lot of the trip, somehow the music of Shearwater (as well as Jonathan Meiburg's side-project "Loma"), seemed most appropriate with the spiritual symbolism of the trip, especially since these lands have some vague similarities to perhaps a colder-weather version of the Central Texas Hills Country, which gave rise to Shearwater, and their music. Likewise, just as Toronto has NXNE, the daddy-of-them-all is SXSW in Austin, TX, where Shearwater first made a name for themselves.
In one added bit of symbolism, during a follow-up trip up the Garafraxa in late Summer of 2021, I stopped along the way in a small town called Williamsford, which is in the middle of Ontario Mennonite Country, and whilst I was there, I paid a short visit to a place called the "Great Books Café", which is a large used book store and café located inside Williamsford's old, village mill. Whilst browsing through stacks on the second floor, I came across a copy of: "The Eastern Panther" by Bruce Davis.
The symmetry of that, of course, did not escape me. And, well, since I didn't already own the book, I rectified that particular situation about ten minutes later.
After that brief detour, I continued to drive NXNE, just as the music continued SXSW, and just as my memories likewise continued apace yet another year later, and yet another year older, as my I let my fingers on the guitar continue the poetry of the strings.
And, for those, who have been slogging and enduring their way through all of my words, thus far, I think the remainder of what I could say for this particular edible-assisted practice day are likely said best within the poetry, itself.
Practice highlights:
Closer to Home/I'm Your Captain - Grand Funk Railroad
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
Seven Bridges Road - (as covered by The Eagles)
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 4
"What's Another Year?" - Johnny Logan
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
DAY 5: (Ignoramus/Ignor-Am-I?
/ / More Canine-Interruptions)
I think there is little more I can say about this particular session than what is already explicitly-mentioned in the Stream-of-Consciousness itself, other than the fact that I have left the final product perhaps a good bit more unpolished and unedited than I usually do, simply because it seemed to lose something essential and looked a lot more like a "dog returning to his vomit" partially-digested word-salad than an actual stream-of-consciousness that seems to be going somewhere.
(Yes, I know that might sound more than a little pretentious, but I assure the reader that it was not meant in that way.) :P
Practice Highlights:
"Urge For Going" by Joni Mitchell
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3
"Leader of the Band" by Dan Fogelberg
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 1
Day 6: (Plague and War Crush Out Another Cigarette,
& Poke The Bear)
I think that, like the previous practice session, most of the points and references within this one are pretty much explicitly-made, and/or reasonably self-explanatory.
Practice Highlights:
"Hearts" by Marty Balin
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3
"Today" by Jefferson Airplane
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
"Someday, You Will Be Loved" - Death Cab For Cutie
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 4
"True Love Will Find You in the End" - Daniel Johnston.
(Hohner Big River G Harmonica, Vocals and Guitar -- standard tuning)
These are going to be quite lengthy and exhaustive, so, at the outset, for folks, who would prefer the Cliff's Notes, {TL;DR} summary, the first paragraph of what continues below should suffice.
{TL;DR} This piece is a stream of consciousness experiment I decided to do, when I felt unusually starved for inspiration. Essentially, I tried to deliberately write down various interesting thoughts that came to me on those days, when the aches and pains (especially in my knees) are bad enough, that I will decide to consume a medical cannabis edible before embarking upon guitar practice, adding to the scratch pad, where appropriate, both before and during practice, my left hand often continuing to tap and/or fret its way up and down the neck, even as my right hand would briefly pick up a pen, whenever the urge struck. / {TL;DR}
(long-assed recitation for those who possess the patience):
As with a few previous pieces I have written and/or thought of during such altered states, I typically prefer a THC/CBD mixture that's lighter on the THC and heavier on the CBD. (For folks, who aren't aware, THC is the cannabinoid that gets you baked, whereas the CBD has excellent pain-management properties, but offers very little in the way of psychoactive effects). Being that I am trying to learn guitar using fifty-year-old hands, as opposed to the far more youthful hands that most (good) guitarists start learning on, (at a more sensible age than 40+), the more I can stave off the cramping, and the various aches and pains in my hands, (as well as the aforementioned ones in my knees, and occasionally my lower back as well) when I practice, the more pleasant and enjoyable the session, and the more productive, overall, it will generally be, (i.e. the point, where mere 'practice' gains that extra nuance, and becomes more akin to the Platonic/Aristotelean concept of: "Praxis" (πρᾶξις)
The reason I generally prefer the lower THC / higher CBD mixture is that there is a fine line, where the lowered inhibitions of being just a little bit baked is far more useful and productive than being a little bit (or even considerably) MORE baked, hence, I've found that my sweet-spot is a 10 mg THC/40-50 mg CBD mixture, depending upon how bad the physical aches and pains I am dealing with are on a particular, given day.
(briefly steps up, onto soapbox):
...and, please note that I am not promoting or advocating any particular substance to anyone; especially if you just so happen to live in a place, where it is illegal. I am only talking about what seems to work best for me. Your own body, and your own choices are strictly your own business, and not mine, and I quite honestly prefer to not try and tell other people how to live their lives, especially, when I have a hard enough time living my own. :P
(/steps off soapbox)
Still, once the edible starts to perform its magick, sometimes the thoughts that come to me don't always have a lot to do with the music that I am playing, (at least not directly), and often, my mind can run on two or more tracks at once. Hence, from this point forward, I think it will be easier for everyone concerned if I am to split my comments up into the corresponding edible-assisted guitar practice days they correspond to, even if, occasionally, certain ideas and concepts might somewhat bleed over from one particular session to another.
Oh, and one more thing before we move on: Sometimes bits and pieces from the songs I was playing during each day's respective practice session, will occasionally creep more directly into the words. To the best of my knowledge, I have done my best to stay well-below the threshold for "fair usage". Still, I encourage readers to go and listen to the songs in question, whether on your online player of choice, or a video on YouTube, and perhaps toss some royalties towards the original artists in question. I figure that's the least I can offer in thanks for the inspiration...
DAY 1: (Famous Studio Chatter & The Global Elephant-in-the-Room)
On the day I decided to launch this experiment, I found myself thinking of a number of things, including some instances of studio-chatter that wound up being preserved on a few well-known recordings, and, which are musical easter eggs, that have, in and of themselves, often become legendary. One in particular that I have mentioned includes a female voice declaring: "It's just the normal noises in here!" which is heard right before the start of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' song: "Even the Losers" off of their 1979 album: "Damn The Torpedoes".
According to the wiki article for that particular album, the voice was that of Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell's wife Marcie, after he had recorded a demo of his guitar part, whilst at home, and was complaining to his wife about the noise from a nearby washing machine bleeding its way into the recording.
Another instance I have quoted (mostly on a follow-up day), is Ringo Starr's exasperated shout of: "I've got blisters on my fingers!" at the end of one of (numerous) takes of "Helter Skelter" during the recording process for the White Album.
With regards to the general train-of-thought that my ideas seemed to be running along: Well, apart from the actual theory and technique of the practice itself, there is also maybe a universal, ongoing theme that's summed up quite nicely in something I once read in an old Swamp Thing comic back in the Eighties, where Swampy is pondering about all the things that humans make most readily (and in descending order), namely:
We make noise, we make war, and (very occasionally) we might make love.
And or course, in this current reality of mid-2022 AD, there's always the Blue & Yellow Elephant in the Room -- There, but for the Grace of G-d, go I. No matter how serious I might feel my various midlife crisis gripes and grumps to be, they tend to very seriously pale beside the current reality of thousands of people, who are having to fight and die in a war...
There really is that sobering realisation that my real Privilege is that, at the moment, I am here, and not there, and there's still one hell of a long way that things can descend into 'bad' before "here" could become even one tenth as bad as they've currently got it over "there", at present.
Once again, there, but for the Grace of G-d, go I.
Practice Highlights:
"Under the Milky Way" by The Church
Vocals and Guitar: Samick LW-015G Dreadnought, aka "Darling Devotchka", pick-strummed -- standard tuning (i.e., "Eddie Ate Dynamite. Good-Bye, Eddie!")
"Summer Wine" by Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
Vocals and Guitar: Takamine New Yorker GY11ME-NS Parlour Guitar, still unnamed, fingerstyle -- standard tuning.
DAY 2: (Weltschmerz, Nuclear Paranoia & Midlife-Crisis Angst)
On the second day of practice, the global elephant still very much remained in the room, perhaps even looking at me a little more balefully and/or reproachfully than the previous day.
"Seriously, dude? You can noodle around on a guitar at a time like this?!?"
And, well... Perhaps for good measure, I also felt echoes of the same sort of nuclear paranoia that I remembered so well from the depths of the Cold War, and once again asking myself:
"What's the chance that someone might just decide to push that Big Red Button® now, and get it over with?"
I am often reminded of an old Cabaret Voltaire lyric from their 1987 song: "Don't Argue".
"It's not right to leave everyone wonderin' how;
I say: 'If you're gonna drop it, then drop it now!'"
And, of course, there is always a counterpoint to this from the relentlessly positive Howard Jones, and his catchy-as-the-plague 1985 song: "Things Can Only Get Better." (if you're a fellow Gen-Xer, you're very welcome for that particular earworm), :P
I also spent a good chunk of the practice working on some Rick Beato fingerpicking exercises (seriously, that man is the YouTube guitar god. I have found his instructional videos more useful than anyone else out there, and I don't mind giving him a well-deserved plug. :) )
Once I get nice and warmed up on the fingerpicking, I try a bit of Simon & Garfunkel because, let's face it: Paul Simon is a beast at fingerstyle playing.
Practice Highlights:
"I am a Rock" by Simon & Garfunkel
Vocals and Guitar: Takamine New Yorker GY11ME-NS Parlour Guitar, still unnamed, fingerstyle -- standard tuning, capo 5.
Rick Beato Fingerpicking Exercises:
"The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel
Vocals and Guitar (Takamine New Yorker), fingerstyle -- standard tuning
"Tiger Blues" (original song/WIP)
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), tapped and pick-strummed -- standard tuning
twelve-bar blues, E7, A7, Bm7 with turnaround
DAY 3: (Cool, Cruel Summer)
Obviously, I found myself thinking of the Bananarama song "Cruel Summer", because for many reasons, we seem to currently find ourselves in a crueller one than usual (and, at least for Midwestern North America), so far a cooler than usual one, as well.
Indeed, I'm no longer quite so sure if Eliot was right about April being the cruellest month...
It seems both foot-stampingly unfair, yet at the same time depressingly logical that the first real summer beyond the COVID plague should bring yet another Horseman of the Apocalypse. I guess Famine and Death are most likely already waiting in the Green Room, with the ashtray already half-filled with chain-smoked cigarette butts...
Practice Highlights -
"Rooks" by Shearwater
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3
(Fool) If You Think it's Over by Chris Rea
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
Crazy Mary by Victoria Williams
(as covered by Pearl Jam)
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 5
DAY 4: (Memories of Lion's Head & Vultures Landing on Mars)
As the fourth day of this particular experiment was finally nice enough that I was able to practice outside after several days of cold and dreary rain, it felt like enough of a renewal that I found myself thinking of yet another previous artistic and general headspace renewal: Specifically the one I experienced during the midst of the COVID lockdowns, when I decided to make several road trips, during the Summer and Early Autumn of 2020, north along the old Garafraxa Road (Ontario Highway 6).
The Old Garafraxa Road cuts vaguely North-Northwest (NXNW) across Southwestern and Midwestern Ontario, mostly following the Niagara Peninsula northward from Lake Erie, and continuing all the way up to the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron, eventually across the ferry to Manitoulin Island, and then eventually to meet up with the Trans Canada Highway as it crosses the wide expanse of Northern Ontario.
If one is to follow the old trope of a map of Southern Ontario being superimposed onto a giant elephant, the Old Garafraxa Road traces a path roughly from the elephant's lower chest to the end of its tail. (The Manitoulin and Northern Ontario segments of Highway 6 are beyond the elephant's tail).
Likewise, those, who know about the Ontario Elephant also know that the fine folks of the Huron port city of Owen Sound (also along the Garafraxa Road), tend to get more than a little pissed-off to be reminded of just where, exactly Owen Sound is located on the elephant
On the trips I have made thus far, I only went as far as the Bruce Peninsula, visiting places such as Owen Sound at its Southeastern corner, and up the east side of the Peninsula, proper, through towns such as Springmount (which has deep connections to my father's side of the family), up through Shallow Lake and Hepworth, where one is presented with the choice of continuing westward to the Lake Side of the Peninsula, where likes Sauble Beach and Sauble Falls, or if one turns North, to continue along the Bay Side of the Peninsula, up through towns such as Clavering, Wiarton (home of a particular cannibalistic, babby-eating albino weather-predicting rodent), Mar, Ferndale and Lion's Head. If one continues still further north, there is also Miller Lake before Land's End at the flowerpot cliffs of Tobermory, and the aforementioned Ferry to Manitoulin.
The name "Garafraxa" is said to originate from an Aboriginal word for the large, North American cat known by many names, including: "Mountain Lion", "Panther, or "Cougar", and (supposedly) marks that particular area of ice-age-shaped fields and forests as the "Land of the Panther," who did indeed, at one point, roam freely throughout nearly all of Eastern North America. Hence, there is a very deep, spiritual symbolism in journeying northward through these gradually-less-tamed lands once ruled by Garafraxa... Even more still when one reaches Lion's Head, which is named for an Ice-Age stone, cliffside feature along the Huron Coast, which vaguely resembles the head of an ancient North American Cave Lion (Panthera Atrox), and who ruled these lands long before Garafraxa.
There was also some very heavy symbolism and symmetry at play, as I chose to undertake those trips whilst wearing a neck-chain with the small, silver vial containing the ashes of Drifter, who was a tame, captive cougar I worked with for a number of years as part of a zoological research project that was originally supposed to be part of my Master's Thesis.
Unfortunately, however, due to a lack of funding and several other issues, I ultimately got my M.Sc. for a different project, although I was still able to continue the original research on a smaller scale, (and privately-funded), with a view to eventually publishing the data if possible. Both I, and my main associate (namely the cougar-in-question's legal owner), continued collecting data until Drifter eventually passed due to age-related issues in November of 2015.
Hence, for a lot of the trip, somehow the music of Shearwater (as well as Jonathan Meiburg's side-project "Loma"), seemed most appropriate with the spiritual symbolism of the trip, especially since these lands have some vague similarities to perhaps a colder-weather version of the Central Texas Hills Country, which gave rise to Shearwater, and their music. Likewise, just as Toronto has NXNE, the daddy-of-them-all is SXSW in Austin, TX, where Shearwater first made a name for themselves.
In one added bit of symbolism, during a follow-up trip up the Garafraxa in late Summer of 2021, I stopped along the way in a small town called Williamsford, which is in the middle of Ontario Mennonite Country, and whilst I was there, I paid a short visit to a place called the "Great Books Café", which is a large used book store and café located inside Williamsford's old, village mill. Whilst browsing through stacks on the second floor, I came across a copy of: "The Eastern Panther" by Bruce Davis.
The symmetry of that, of course, did not escape me. And, well, since I didn't already own the book, I rectified that particular situation about ten minutes later.
After that brief detour, I continued to drive NXNE, just as the music continued SXSW, and just as my memories likewise continued apace yet another year later, and yet another year older, as my I let my fingers on the guitar continue the poetry of the strings.
And, for those, who have been slogging and enduring their way through all of my words, thus far, I think the remainder of what I could say for this particular edible-assisted practice day are likely said best within the poetry, itself.
Practice highlights:
Closer to Home/I'm Your Captain - Grand Funk Railroad
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
Seven Bridges Road - (as covered by The Eagles)
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 4
"What's Another Year?" - Johnny Logan
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
DAY 5: (Ignoramus/Ignor-Am-I?
/ / More Canine-Interruptions)
I think there is little more I can say about this particular session than what is already explicitly-mentioned in the Stream-of-Consciousness itself, other than the fact that I have left the final product perhaps a good bit more unpolished and unedited than I usually do, simply because it seemed to lose something essential and looked a lot more like a "dog returning to his vomit" partially-digested word-salad than an actual stream-of-consciousness that seems to be going somewhere.
(Yes, I know that might sound more than a little pretentious, but I assure the reader that it was not meant in that way.) :P
Practice Highlights:
"Urge For Going" by Joni Mitchell
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3
"Leader of the Band" by Dan Fogelberg
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 1
Day 6: (Plague and War Crush Out Another Cigarette,
& Poke The Bear)
I think that, like the previous practice session, most of the points and references within this one are pretty much explicitly-made, and/or reasonably self-explanatory.
Practice Highlights:
"Hearts" by Marty Balin
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3
"Today" by Jefferson Airplane
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning
"Someday, You Will Be Loved" - Death Cab For Cutie
Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 4
"True Love Will Find You in the End" - Daniel Johnston.
(Hohner Big River G Harmonica, Vocals and Guitar -- standard tuning)
Category Poetry / Animal related (non-anthro)
Species Coyote
Gender Male
Size 50 x 50px
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