New Day (And Possible Concussion)

I'm starting to feel a little better...sometimes it all just gets to you, yknow? But today's an improvement from yesterday, and perhaps tomorrow will be better still. Cyn (bless her heart) was walking me around the yard showing me her plantings...things are gonna be really pretty if all these trees take. We went into the barn to see if the swallows had arrived yet, and I managed to clock myself a real good one on an overhanging beam! Saw stars and everything. Cyn picked me up off the floor and dusted the hay and horsepoop off me, and I seem OK. I looked in the mirror and my eyeballs seem all right, so probably no concussion or anything. But I've got a really stylish lump on my noggin! Maybe it's knocked some sense into me though...I could use that...

No Way Forward

If there's a wall to hit, I hit it a while ago. Somehow I feel drained of any strength. I can manage an outward show of optimism, but inside I don't know if I see a way forward right now. And I feel exibitionistic writing this out in a public blog, too, but there it is...I think all the pressures in my life are finally coming to the fore. I was denying that they were getting under my skin, but I guess I was wrong about that. Perhaps tomorrow will be better, it often is. Hope so.

The Woods Are Lovely

Rushing through my busy and rather stress-filled day, talking to recording clients, cleaning clients, new associates, working on websites, ebay guitar deals, and huge offices to swab out...and driving the dirt road to town, saw the wood lot down the street, still with its dusting of snow protected from the sun by the sheltering trees. A magical place, with the creek running through it and the light through the branches reflecting off the water and snow like a million diamonds. I'm a very lucky person, and I'm glad I can sometimes have moments like that one, to put everything else into perspective.

Bigsby Tremolo

Just got a Bigsby Tremolo put on my new guitar! Mickey managed to set it up in record time...truly he is the Ninja Master of Guitar Techs. For those of you who don't know, the Bigsby is a mechanism that allows you to bend all of your guitar strings up (or down) simultaneously...a whammy bar if you will. If you've heard the Ventures, or any Surf Music, you've heard the sound. I've messed with other tremolos before, but listening to the amazing Johnny A. finally won me over to the world of the Bigsby. If you haven't heard that guy, don't waste any time, go get one of his albums, or go to YouTube and watch him play a little...you'll see what I mean. Of course, a Bigsby sure won't make me into Johnny A., but it's a nice thing to have in the arsenal. Now I just have to mess with it for about 30 years or so...

The Tides Of March

Things are getting soggy around here...we've had about 4 days of straight rain. Sort of reminds me of the Northwest coast! There's a pretty amazing river running through our eastern field, back through some wetlands and over our neighbor's fields, off into the distance...a huge amount of water on the move. Looks pretty crazy, but this often happens. Then for a while the swamps are really swampy, and the frogs all wake up and start their annual Spring Orgy, and we know that the ice and snow are behind us for a bit. Strangely enough, the cats don't seem to want to get out in this stuff.

I've been feeling better and better recently, with more energy and positivity than is usual for my old cynical self, and having a pretty good time all told. Working on new music, spending a little more time in the gym, getting out and seeing friends. After the flu that almost did me in, and the winter that almost did the same, I'm starting to get that Spring vibe. Yeah, it'll freeze tonight, and maybe we'll get buried in snow again for a while, but I sense the warm coming on, and that's a good thing.

The Slowly Spinning Room

The lights go down...music rises from the silence. My head begins to spin. A tumult of sensation overwhelms me, and I'm helplessly off my feet and whirling, whirling through time and space, the lights too bright and the sounds too loud, round and round the maelstrom as I'm tossed ever lower, down into the depths...

Opium dream? Satanic attack? Bad NIN concert flashback? Nah, just a really nasty influenza virus that managed to get under my defences and kick my sad butt this week. Worst I've had in a long time...I can understand how epidemics of this stuff carried thousands and thousands off to the underworld, I felt like I got pretty close. I swear I think at one point I saw some guy in Plutonic robes smiling and beckoning me in, but I started swimming towards the surface and got away this time. Now I'm weak like a little kitten, and it all seems like a strange, very painful nightmare...must buy more oranges.

Looking at my folks old editions of encyclopedia, the Britannica and the good ol' World Book, I used to just thumb through those for fun. Now, amazingly, the same amount of information can just sit in a few GB of your hard drive, or even live accessibly out somewhere in cyberspace for instant retrieval. Although somehow I feel I trust Wikipedia less than Britannica, and I know I can't just open it up and read at random the same way (although I must say I use Wiki all the time). It's like I can't really get a charge buying music online the same way I do when I'm in a (now sadly rare) really good music store, I can't wander around the same right-brained way, stumbling into strange and wonderful stuff accidentally...or by hanging around jawing with the hip Record Store Guy. I was one of those once, by the way...not necessarily hip, but a Record Store Guy. I don't miss all of it, but I do miss turning people on to cool music...

Playing music in a state of high fever is an odd experience. You can't really get anything done, but sometimes you get really strange insights. Running through some chord arpeggios and scale sequences while practicing a tune, and suddenly the patterns of "notes available while passing through time" became really clear. I could see the various interlocking scales and chord tones incredibly clearly, and how various choices could lead to different melodic and harmonic outcomes...and how of course that this is only the very first step. The next goal is to completely assimilate those patterns so that there are infinite options...and then, the transcendence of those patterns and into real freedom. If that sounds a bit Metaphysical, it's because I think it really is! Mastering music as a metaphor for the Spiritual journey...yeah, you've heard it before, but hey, it's my cosmology and I'm stickin' with it. But anything can have that metaphorical cosmology I think...what about that Zen butcher? He did his job so perfectly that his knives never got dull, and his focus on his actions was clearer than the monks in the monastery. But I'm stickin' with the music thing, you get shiny guitars and the chicks dig it.

Perhaps I'm still recovering a little...my mind seems to be wandering. Sometimes that's actually a pretty good thing, and I wonder if maybe a little stumbling around in the right side of the brain might not be just the thing in these strange dark pre-Spring weeks. But I'd much rather do it without the incredible sinus and joint pain, thanks!

Dire February

February is a month in Michigan where people are just really hanging on, trying to get through to Spring, still held by the icy teeth of Winter. Some types probably blog more during these periods...I seem to do less. Less is happening. I get to work. I get back. I lie on the couch. Cyn and I try hard not to get in each others way and to respect space, since we work together as well as live together, and that's a kind of weird vibe. I don't get to the studio to work as much as I should, but still practice with the Mobsters when the weather permits...we've had more than a few rehearsals cancelled due to heavy snow. Today may be such a day. A friend who was looking for a bassist with his new group called last week and I went out and played with them...quite a good Power Pop band, but I don't know if I'll really have the time to do it. I need to try to focus on working with this Swing stuff, and with my own original music, and that just may preclude any other projects.

Really I feel like I'm just waiting for the weather to break for good. So ready for it...I'd love to take a walk without freezing something off. Last night the Coyotes were howling again, and I called the barn cats indoors for protection. They ran in pretty quickly, too! I'm sure those Coyotes are hungry and Bitey or Bluto would be a welcome snack. Much as I admire the wild things, I'd like to avoid that.

I'm playing my new guitar quite a bit right now...it's made by Agile, a Korean company. Essentially a Les Paul knockoff, I've had a few Paul players tell me it's a good as many an LP. Sounds great and looks crazy...the top is all white pearlescent pickguard finish. I didn't expect it to sound as good as it does, but there's solid mahogany underneath that, and the pickups, hardware and electronics are surprisingly very high quality. And it's less than a tenth the price of a LP...which makes it possible for this particular starving musician to own one. Watch out, Korea is taking over the world...

Actually, it feels good to write in this journal again. I think it's easy this time of year to just get torpid and hibernate as much as possible...I know I've done that a lot. But writing kind of gets my internal motor going again, which is important anytime really. Now I've just gotta get out to the studio and finish off those pesky tunes of mine!