New Challenges

As I lie like a eastern pasha on my silken cushions in my library, fez askew, with the opium smoke wafting above me like the ectoplasmic ghost of Coleridge, I'm musing on my taking on the Front Man/Lead Guitarist role in the Mobsters band. My trusty but insanely unusual Custom Deacon Limited leans against a pillow, its pearlescent pickguard gleaming in the light of the oil lamps. Have I bitten off a bit more than I can chew here? Not, I think, for my bandmates, they seem to like my singing and playing well enough, but for me? I'm pretty picky (usually) about the guitarists I work for...and now I work for myself...I think I've got more shedding to do.

I know that I'm hard on myself about trying for excellence in music, but I can't fool myself in knowing where the bar has been placed in the areas that I want to be good at, and they're pretty darn high. I was feeling OK about my playing, and then the other night I went out with some friends to see George Bedard and Bill Kirtchen play...man! What amazing and tasteful musicians they are. Beautiful melodies and harmonies just flow out of those guys so naturally, it's a fantastic thing to see. Makes me realise where the heights are, and wonder about how high up the mountain I can climb. Thing is, I love to learn, I just wish I had a few more lifetimes to work on it all. In those strange hazy conversations I sometimes have with friends the question comes up, what if you had unlimited time to live? I always keep thinking, damn, I'd really have time to become a musician then. I think I could master that chord melody stuff in a couple centuries if I applied myself! And after a bit more of that for guitar I could concentrate on learning composition and orchestration. Then, a few more centuries for anthropology, science, literature...then some time for mysticism, and a millennia or so in meditation...

Thing is, my time is a lot shorter than that, and a lot of it is taken up with fairly mundane stuff. So I have to get a lot more focused on what I want to do with the little time I have to do it in! Believe me, I'm working at it. Tomorrow it looks like we'll be snowed in, and I'm planning on spending as much time as I can playing some music. And to anyone who thinks this is like hard work or something, think again! Really, it's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Although I've played lots of fine music in the nude as well...but perhaps the less said about that the better...