the endless road

Post 18 of 90.

The process of pruning back the mass of iTunes audio files on my laptop hard drive continues.

It's rained off and on all day, cold and nasty.

I thought about driving into town today to visit my favorite coffeeshop, but decided against it and spent most of the day obsessively trolling newsblogs for some sort of insight about the state of the world, something that could help it all make sense. Somehow. Maybe it's not possible.

I have a friend in DC, a songwriter and clawhammer banjo player, I haven't talked to for a while. The last time I saw him his son had enlisted in the army and was being shipped out to the Middle East. Then I heard news that his son had been wounded, not badly, but still I find myself avoiding dropping an email. I'm not sure why. I'm determined to get it together and drop a line this week.

I think this is the week to order the ProTools system, too. I'll need to double-check my list. A call to JC is probably in order to find out what kind of compressor he's been using on vocals.

Guitar practice tonight was a little right hand, and then some no-tempo work on First Primary variations. There's a sympathetic tension reaction in the pinky, and I'm not sure yet how to get in there and inhibit that. Maybe I'm using too much tension overall in my left hand. I'm beginning to develop the ability to relax my left shoulder when I fret and allow the guitar to take some of the weight, so maybe this left hand tension is just the next step in the endless road.

One thought I've been having for a while now, one of those things that is perfectly obvious on its face, but still startling when comprehended in full, is the perception that every single person around me is living out a full life of their own, each as complete and immersive in its experiencing as my own. It's somehow easy to forget this fact in the day-to-day scramble or just not notice it, as if these others who appear before you are mere things. Is this a failure of compassion? How do you still honor the humanity of others in this sense without becoming vulnerable yourself?