Post 90 of 90.
Rainy day, with a drop in temperature.
After working on some drum sequence programming in Strike last night, I went upstairs and once again fell asleep fully clothed.
I have some powerful habits in my life. I fool myself if I believe I am actually in control of more than a small sliver of my personal patterns, states, and responses.
I got my email link to Chuck Anderson's The Six Secrets of Guitar Fingerings and took a printout to lunch. I don't believe this material necessarily to be THE six secrets--there are many "secrets" to this topic, with the GC Primaries addressing another dimension this book misses entirely--but it's good stuff nonetheless, and it could help me a great deal with getting some scalar/solo playing under my fingers in NST. I'll also be applying Succession, Completed Flow, Simultaneous Release, Constant Release, etc. as I go through this. Jamie Andreas' ideas about Light/Firm Finger, No-Tempo Practice, Posing, etc. will also be incorporated, along with all of the useful Alexander Technique ideas.
I'm at the coffeeshop, and in a moment, it's time to go home for guitar practice. I've realized I need to be more diligent with making notes about what I'm practicing.
I also need to be less shy about marking up my tablature printouts with notes about fingering and so on.
On the bright side, I'm developing some groovy calluses on the left hand. The pinky especially is firming up nicely.
I think for a while after this, I'm just going to post now and then when I feel the need to do so. After a few weeks, I will probably also look back over these entries and see if anything strikes me as worthy of further comment.
Later.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
lydian chromatic theory of woof woof blah blah blah
Post 89 of 90.
Warm day, no jacket required.
Updated the Ohio Guitar Ensemble myspace page.
I chickened out on ordering George Russell's first volume about his Lydian Chromatic theory of music. I found myself reading the forums, and it seems like there's a whole new world of nomenclature to learn there, in addition to the standard system we have that already confuses the hell out of most people.
I guess I was a bit intimidated by it all.
Whether I could hear it is a whole other question, too. Without some connection to what you hear, it's hopeless.
I had my eye on Chuck Anderson's The Six Secrets of Guitar Fingerings for a while, and so ordered that instead. They'll also be sending a link to an ebook version, which is cool. I don't have to wait.
Warm day, no jacket required.
Updated the Ohio Guitar Ensemble myspace page.
I chickened out on ordering George Russell's first volume about his Lydian Chromatic theory of music. I found myself reading the forums, and it seems like there's a whole new world of nomenclature to learn there, in addition to the standard system we have that already confuses the hell out of most people.
I guess I was a bit intimidated by it all.
Whether I could hear it is a whole other question, too. Without some connection to what you hear, it's hopeless.
I had my eye on Chuck Anderson's The Six Secrets of Guitar Fingerings for a while, and so ordered that instead. They'll also be sending a link to an ebook version, which is cool. I don't have to wait.
Monday, March 26, 2007
the way forward
Post 88 of 90.
I think you could say I'm in the process of backfilling and confirming details for a decision that has pretty much already been made. This will probably be ongoing for a little while yet, but not too long.
I felt confident enough in my own deliberations to share details with close family members, and they concurred that it seemed like a promising course of action.
This was an important step for me, but it also felt crucial that I practice containment for some time prior and keep my own counsel for a while before mentioning anything.
Some preliminary groundwork may now commence. It will be a while yet before I'm at the point of no return, but the clock is indeed ticking and dates on a calendar have been penciled in.
Time will yet tell whether this part of my own personal life-unfolding can successfully cope with events in the larger outside world, or whether my timing is off (this being the first year of the sixth seven-year cycle of my life).
In relation to this, a lot of anger arrived today, too. All at once, I recognized that events, decisions, and circumstances from long ago, extending back into early adolescence, had done a lot more damage to my personal integrity and ability to function in the world as a human being than I had ever imagined possible. Some powerful patterns and habits of thought, feeling, and action.
I think you could say I'm in the process of backfilling and confirming details for a decision that has pretty much already been made. This will probably be ongoing for a little while yet, but not too long.
I felt confident enough in my own deliberations to share details with close family members, and they concurred that it seemed like a promising course of action.
This was an important step for me, but it also felt crucial that I practice containment for some time prior and keep my own counsel for a while before mentioning anything.
Some preliminary groundwork may now commence. It will be a while yet before I'm at the point of no return, but the clock is indeed ticking and dates on a calendar have been penciled in.
Time will yet tell whether this part of my own personal life-unfolding can successfully cope with events in the larger outside world, or whether my timing is off (this being the first year of the sixth seven-year cycle of my life).
In relation to this, a lot of anger arrived today, too. All at once, I recognized that events, decisions, and circumstances from long ago, extending back into early adolescence, had done a lot more damage to my personal integrity and ability to function in the world as a human being than I had ever imagined possible. Some powerful patterns and habits of thought, feeling, and action.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
legs on a snake
Post 87 of 90.
I think I'm going to have to make a project of re-learning how to solo at some point. I'm not quite at a point with this technique where I can play how I want, and my old way of doing it has now atrophied to where it's almost useless. I'm right in between somewhere. I'm also still learning how to "hear" things in NST, better than before, but not quite to where I feel like I can just take off on an adventure across the fretboard and make it work.
A day in town to get a cappuccino, relax, and go for a walk. I'm checking into a coffeeshop in the Northside area as an occasional alternate to Lookout Joe for weekend cappuccino runs so that I don't have to drive so far. Sitwell's is a lot closer, but their cappuccinos have never quite convinced me (and they've never quite been the same since they moved down the street to their current location).
We'll see. If the one I've heard about in Northside is the same one I've driven past on occasion, it's kind of small and potentially crowded if I go at the wrong time (smaller than Lookout Joe).
Now for some ear training and practice.
Three more entries to go...
I think I'm going to have to make a project of re-learning how to solo at some point. I'm not quite at a point with this technique where I can play how I want, and my old way of doing it has now atrophied to where it's almost useless. I'm right in between somewhere. I'm also still learning how to "hear" things in NST, better than before, but not quite to where I feel like I can just take off on an adventure across the fretboard and make it work.
A day in town to get a cappuccino, relax, and go for a walk. I'm checking into a coffeeshop in the Northside area as an occasional alternate to Lookout Joe for weekend cappuccino runs so that I don't have to drive so far. Sitwell's is a lot closer, but their cappuccinos have never quite convinced me (and they've never quite been the same since they moved down the street to their current location).
We'll see. If the one I've heard about in Northside is the same one I've driven past on occasion, it's kind of small and potentially crowded if I go at the wrong time (smaller than Lookout Joe).
Now for some ear training and practice.
Three more entries to go...
Saturday, March 24, 2007
late practice
Post 86 of 90.
I spent the bulk of this evening going over alternate guitar parts to pieces I already know, including Intergalactic Boogie Express and Eye of the Needle. For EotN, my aim was to work on playing these alternate parts while tapping my foot at the same time. Very difficult. I had been talking to the team about this over email and felt like I needed to get my hands dirty with it, even if I won't be playing those parts in performance. My hunch about things wanting to speed up on the tags to the main figures to EotN seemed to confirm itself. I was tapping my foot, but I felt uncertain which note of each tag would need to coincide with a foot tap. Because of this uncertainty, it was like that part of the figure was detaching itself and floating free in time, only to then rush to get to the next iteration where a feeling of rhythmic security was waiting.
Yeah.
I also looked at some ideas for some solo picking this coming Friday at the workplace lunch jam/performance thing.
No rehearsal with Don today. I called Don last night to discuss it. Matt would be unavailable to work, and with all the traveling to Chicago, I'm a bit burned out on the driving thing. I've put a lot of miles on my car in this pursuit, and right now it would just be nice to sit it out for a bit until the next step makes itself clearer.
Speaking of which, we also discussed possibilities for laying a groundwork for the entire team to come to this area to perform. This might necessitate some "fractalized" team-within-the-team performing as a prelude. Other members of the team in Illinois and Wisconsin would be driving a long way, and I feel like it would really need to be worth their while for them to make the sacrifice to come down here. There's much more of a base emerging in Chicago for playing out, while things in the Dayton-Cincinnati are perpetually on the edge without ever quite getting there.
I spent the bulk of this evening going over alternate guitar parts to pieces I already know, including Intergalactic Boogie Express and Eye of the Needle. For EotN, my aim was to work on playing these alternate parts while tapping my foot at the same time. Very difficult. I had been talking to the team about this over email and felt like I needed to get my hands dirty with it, even if I won't be playing those parts in performance. My hunch about things wanting to speed up on the tags to the main figures to EotN seemed to confirm itself. I was tapping my foot, but I felt uncertain which note of each tag would need to coincide with a foot tap. Because of this uncertainty, it was like that part of the figure was detaching itself and floating free in time, only to then rush to get to the next iteration where a feeling of rhythmic security was waiting.
Yeah.
I also looked at some ideas for some solo picking this coming Friday at the workplace lunch jam/performance thing.
No rehearsal with Don today. I called Don last night to discuss it. Matt would be unavailable to work, and with all the traveling to Chicago, I'm a bit burned out on the driving thing. I've put a lot of miles on my car in this pursuit, and right now it would just be nice to sit it out for a bit until the next step makes itself clearer.
Speaking of which, we also discussed possibilities for laying a groundwork for the entire team to come to this area to perform. This might necessitate some "fractalized" team-within-the-team performing as a prelude. Other members of the team in Illinois and Wisconsin would be driving a long way, and I feel like it would really need to be worth their while for them to make the sacrifice to come down here. There's much more of a base emerging in Chicago for playing out, while things in the Dayton-Cincinnati are perpetually on the edge without ever quite getting there.
Friday, March 23, 2007
brain dump
Post 85 of 90.
I found myself in need of a major brain dump today, and this entails writing longhand in a notebook with a pen. Something about using a pen for this exercise connects you to the physicality of who you are while you simultaneously pour out thought, and I think I filled up about six pages, all various rantings, ravings, and obsessions that have been rumbling about in my mind.
There was a sense of pressure and necessity to this. It was all stuff I cannot tell anybody else without repercussions, and none of it was appropriate for this space. But, I've been doing this exercise for years and found it valuable. It originated in the Artist's Way work I began in earnest in 1995, and which I still revisit today. I must credit the work I did with this in the period immediately following with helping me gather myself together. I had been self-destructing and thrashing about in the dark, like blindly crawling on my hands and knees through a cramped, pitch-black tunnel miles underground, with no promise that I would ever reach the surface again. That was the feeling and flavor of it.
I'm convinced I burned through some major karma in the first 1/3 or so of my life.
I'm tempted now and then to gather up all of these notebooks and burn them. I rarely go back and read them, and I would pity anybody who would take it upon themselves to wade through the up-chucked sewage of my mind.
If I did build a bonfire and burn all of them, I'm not sure whether it would be a loss, a liberation, some combination, or something else entirely.
I don't feel the same way about the recorded artifacts I've made over the years. I am occasionally shocked by moments of musical insight or invention when I go back and listen. Some little idea I threw down onto tape over ten years may have been beyond my ability to develop a little further at that time, but now I would know what to do with it. And my ear has improved so that I could actually figure out what I was doing!
I'm still listening to the Sun Music recording from Shimmies & Strings 2 a lot.
I found myself in need of a major brain dump today, and this entails writing longhand in a notebook with a pen. Something about using a pen for this exercise connects you to the physicality of who you are while you simultaneously pour out thought, and I think I filled up about six pages, all various rantings, ravings, and obsessions that have been rumbling about in my mind.
There was a sense of pressure and necessity to this. It was all stuff I cannot tell anybody else without repercussions, and none of it was appropriate for this space. But, I've been doing this exercise for years and found it valuable. It originated in the Artist's Way work I began in earnest in 1995, and which I still revisit today. I must credit the work I did with this in the period immediately following with helping me gather myself together. I had been self-destructing and thrashing about in the dark, like blindly crawling on my hands and knees through a cramped, pitch-black tunnel miles underground, with no promise that I would ever reach the surface again. That was the feeling and flavor of it.
I'm convinced I burned through some major karma in the first 1/3 or so of my life.
I'm tempted now and then to gather up all of these notebooks and burn them. I rarely go back and read them, and I would pity anybody who would take it upon themselves to wade through the up-chucked sewage of my mind.
If I did build a bonfire and burn all of them, I'm not sure whether it would be a loss, a liberation, some combination, or something else entirely.
I don't feel the same way about the recorded artifacts I've made over the years. I am occasionally shocked by moments of musical insight or invention when I go back and listen. Some little idea I threw down onto tape over ten years may have been beyond my ability to develop a little further at that time, but now I would know what to do with it. And my ear has improved so that I could actually figure out what I was doing!
I'm still listening to the Sun Music recording from Shimmies & Strings 2 a lot.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
rainy day
Post 84 of 90.
Heavy rain in the afternoon, but no significant chill to accompany it.
Yep, a weather report is the best I can muster today.
Since it occurs to me, the thing I've been doing of naming all of my posts is intentional. What's in a name? Can I find a title that summarizes the mood/feel/vibe of the days experiencing?
Heavy rain in the afternoon, but no significant chill to accompany it.
Yep, a weather report is the best I can muster today.
Since it occurs to me, the thing I've been doing of naming all of my posts is intentional. What's in a name? Can I find a title that summarizes the mood/feel/vibe of the days experiencing?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
danger! danger! don't talk to strangers!
Post 83 of 90.
I've been pondering, pondering, pondering...
Following the Shimmies & Strings 2 performance, we had a person "hovering" in the vicinity of the performance space while we were tearing down. I don't know who he was. Somebody probably knew him, since I get the impression most of the audience were friends and family of the dancers. I imagine it's rare for complete strangers to wander in from the street, although you never know. I believe the performance was advertised to the public.
But this isn't even the point I'm trying to get at.
I'm not making a judgment about him, since I have almost no information to go on regarding who he was. This one is all about me. (But then, it's always about me, isn't it?)
No, what interests me is the reaction I had to this person's presence on the scene--suspicion, alertness, the feeling that I needed to monitor this person in order to protect the performance space (still operative, I suppose, even in the aftermath, a point of vulnerability I hadn't considered before).
This experience interests me because of my habit/preference to be "invisible" and lurk around at local music shows here in Cincinnati, going on almost ten years now.
Now and then over the years, the odd local scenester will spot me hanging about and doing my lurking-type thing, and I often see and feel a reaction of outright fear. This has baffled me for a long time.
I mean, I'm there to listen and pay attention to the performance. What's the problem? They advertised to the public. Very often there was also a local music close-up piece in the local rag. They want to be "rock stars" and receive the attention and adulation of the masses, right? Shouldn't they be happy that a member of "the public" has arrived to hear their music? But all the same, here they are wigging out because someone they don't already know has shown up! I often wind up feeling like I've crashed someone's private party by mistake.
Maybe this reaction I had to our very own "lurker" was my chance to experience directly the other side of the equation. Maybe this is what the fearful scenesters are experiencing!
So...what do I do with this?
I'm still sort of mulling it over, but one possibility is that I should perhaps make an effort to introduce myself at some point, so they know I'm a real person and not some phantom of their own projected fears. It doesn't need to be much. Just say hello, thank them for the music, tell them my name, and then move on.
The other pole I swing to is along the lines of, "No, dammit! I'm not out to 'join the tribe!' I'm not trying to 'make the scene.' If my presence bothers them, it's their own damn problem! Do you want to be famous or not?! I'm not going to bend over backwards to soothe your stupid fears! Get over it, rock stars! "
So, I don't know. Maybe there are other options. I can experiment a little bit and see.
On another level, I often shy away from meeting "the people behind the music." I can think of at least one incident (about ten years, in fact) where the guy was a jerk, and I couldn't listen to his music ever again afterward with clean ears. It really polluted the whole thing for me. Don't we already know that the music often happens in spite of the people involved? Why meet them at all? I'll just listen!
We'll see.
I've been pondering, pondering, pondering...
Following the Shimmies & Strings 2 performance, we had a person "hovering" in the vicinity of the performance space while we were tearing down. I don't know who he was. Somebody probably knew him, since I get the impression most of the audience were friends and family of the dancers. I imagine it's rare for complete strangers to wander in from the street, although you never know. I believe the performance was advertised to the public.
But this isn't even the point I'm trying to get at.
I'm not making a judgment about him, since I have almost no information to go on regarding who he was. This one is all about me. (But then, it's always about me, isn't it?)
No, what interests me is the reaction I had to this person's presence on the scene--suspicion, alertness, the feeling that I needed to monitor this person in order to protect the performance space (still operative, I suppose, even in the aftermath, a point of vulnerability I hadn't considered before).
This experience interests me because of my habit/preference to be "invisible" and lurk around at local music shows here in Cincinnati, going on almost ten years now.
Now and then over the years, the odd local scenester will spot me hanging about and doing my lurking-type thing, and I often see and feel a reaction of outright fear. This has baffled me for a long time.
I mean, I'm there to listen and pay attention to the performance. What's the problem? They advertised to the public. Very often there was also a local music close-up piece in the local rag. They want to be "rock stars" and receive the attention and adulation of the masses, right? Shouldn't they be happy that a member of "the public" has arrived to hear their music? But all the same, here they are wigging out because someone they don't already know has shown up! I often wind up feeling like I've crashed someone's private party by mistake.
Maybe this reaction I had to our very own "lurker" was my chance to experience directly the other side of the equation. Maybe this is what the fearful scenesters are experiencing!
So...what do I do with this?
I'm still sort of mulling it over, but one possibility is that I should perhaps make an effort to introduce myself at some point, so they know I'm a real person and not some phantom of their own projected fears. It doesn't need to be much. Just say hello, thank them for the music, tell them my name, and then move on.
The other pole I swing to is along the lines of, "No, dammit! I'm not out to 'join the tribe!' I'm not trying to 'make the scene.' If my presence bothers them, it's their own damn problem! Do you want to be famous or not?! I'm not going to bend over backwards to soothe your stupid fears! Get over it, rock stars! "
So, I don't know. Maybe there are other options. I can experiment a little bit and see.
On another level, I often shy away from meeting "the people behind the music." I can think of at least one incident (about ten years, in fact) where the guy was a jerk, and I couldn't listen to his music ever again afterward with clean ears. It really polluted the whole thing for me. Don't we already know that the music often happens in spite of the people involved? Why meet them at all? I'll just listen!
We'll see.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
performance opportunity
Post 82 of 90.
I've been handed the task of organizing a hootenanny/jam/open mic-type thingy for the various musical talents at work. We have a lot of talented singer-songwriters.
I think I will be expected to contribute musically, so I'm pondering whether I can get up there and make a credible stab at playing some Guitar Craft repertoire in a "solo" format.
Without pitch correction software and unlimited takes on a multi-track, it's a bit too sketchy. I certainly have no idea how I could pull off any of the vocal-based I've written on multi-track and translate/transpose them onto an acoustic guitar. I would be back in the land of amateur strummery, something I've been avoiding like the plague for a long time, and to pick Crafty-style and sing I would need five hands and two brains to pull it off.
I may take in my electric guitar and amp to lay down some soundscape-y sorts of stuff for filler, then maybe play NST acoustic, perhaps with a little looping here and there to help me out. I don't have a Boomerang or Echoplex, though, so it would be the long delay on my Johnson amp with the infinite repeat feature, which is a bit primitive in comparison.
I've been handed the task of organizing a hootenanny/jam/open mic-type thingy for the various musical talents at work. We have a lot of talented singer-songwriters.
I think I will be expected to contribute musically, so I'm pondering whether I can get up there and make a credible stab at playing some Guitar Craft repertoire in a "solo" format.
Without pitch correction software and unlimited takes on a multi-track, it's a bit too sketchy. I certainly have no idea how I could pull off any of the vocal-based I've written on multi-track and translate/transpose them onto an acoustic guitar. I would be back in the land of amateur strummery, something I've been avoiding like the plague for a long time, and to pick Crafty-style and sing I would need five hands and two brains to pull it off.
I may take in my electric guitar and amp to lay down some soundscape-y sorts of stuff for filler, then maybe play NST acoustic, perhaps with a little looping here and there to help me out. I don't have a Boomerang or Echoplex, though, so it would be the long delay on my Johnson amp with the infinite repeat feature, which is a bit primitive in comparison.
Monday, March 19, 2007
fiddle faddle
Post 81 of 90.
I got home late and spent the little time I had fiddling with the Strike plug-in in ProTools. I think I've figured out how to step program and how the variety of snare rolls and hi-hat sounds are programmed.
This should be fun!
I think I'm ready to begin programming my own style templates. I just wish there was some way to open Strike as a standalone program so I could spend some time programming a wide variety of beats and patterns without having to have a song template open in ProTools (in large part because of the processing load and the tendency of the program to crash). With Guitar Rig 2, I've enjoyed being able to open it up as a standalone and spend some with the electric guitar doing some sound design.
OS X has been crashing a lot lately! It seems to be happening mainly when either streaming video or opening the visualizer in iTunes. It seems to get caught in a stuttering loop and everything locks up, followed by a "screen of death" telling me to reboot.
This never used to happen.
I got home late and spent the little time I had fiddling with the Strike plug-in in ProTools. I think I've figured out how to step program and how the variety of snare rolls and hi-hat sounds are programmed.
This should be fun!
I think I'm ready to begin programming my own style templates. I just wish there was some way to open Strike as a standalone program so I could spend some time programming a wide variety of beats and patterns without having to have a song template open in ProTools (in large part because of the processing load and the tendency of the program to crash). With Guitar Rig 2, I've enjoyed being able to open it up as a standalone and spend some with the electric guitar doing some sound design.
OS X has been crashing a lot lately! It seems to be happening mainly when either streaming video or opening the visualizer in iTunes. It seems to get caught in a stuttering loop and everything locks up, followed by a "screen of death" telling me to reboot.
This never used to happen.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
"sunmusic" rules!
Post 80 of 90.
I've listened to the recording of Sun Music from the Shimmies & Strings 2 gig, and the more I listen to it, the more I like the piece. It gives me some nice "mind movies," and I'm developing little stories/scenarios to go along with each section. The piece has a nice "poetry" to it.
The iTunes visualizer offered up some nice and wonderfully congruent, sun-like visuals. Fractals flowing with flame and burning atomic granularities.
I think I'm happy with the solo I played on Hope. The phrasing seems to work, there seems to be a common motif I'm working with throughout, and it winds up with a light 4-3 resolution to the 3rd scale degree I find pleasing. The only negatives I notice are a slight tendency to rush, and that while it has some melodic interest and feels internally consistent, it doesn't take into account the need to wrap up and prepare the ear for the circulation that immediately follows.
The "fairy fingers" section of Blockhead is taking on a lovely pointillism in my mind's eye. I can see the notes as pulsating dots.
I've been interested for some time in RF's accounts of "realizing" and/or "recognizing" when he's made a decision about something. Something about how describes this process speaks to me. I find real decisions often do not flow from a rigorous, intellectual logic and definite verbal thought-form--"Hear ye, I thusly do make and proclaim this decision for the next step in my life..."--but seem to originate of their own accord elsewhere, from where I'm not sure.
Or maybe it's more about the various "centres" coming into conjunction. If the "decision" involves only the intellectual centre, but the others are not simultaneously in agreement and in accord, this "decision" hardly goes anywhere at all.
There have definitely been times when I've made an important decision in my life, but I've only realized it myself when I see it reflected back to me from others. In one case, I made what seemed, to me, to be a casual comment. But something about the moment, the look on the other person's face, stuck in my memory, and I only knew I had made a bona fide decision about something from how it affected someone else in that moment. I could look back and see it. And yet I couldn't really trace back to some single moment when the decision had been made. I just know from this incident in conversation with another that the decision had been made and was already in motion.
Ten more diary entries to go...
I've listened to the recording of Sun Music from the Shimmies & Strings 2 gig, and the more I listen to it, the more I like the piece. It gives me some nice "mind movies," and I'm developing little stories/scenarios to go along with each section. The piece has a nice "poetry" to it.
The iTunes visualizer offered up some nice and wonderfully congruent, sun-like visuals. Fractals flowing with flame and burning atomic granularities.
I think I'm happy with the solo I played on Hope. The phrasing seems to work, there seems to be a common motif I'm working with throughout, and it winds up with a light 4-3 resolution to the 3rd scale degree I find pleasing. The only negatives I notice are a slight tendency to rush, and that while it has some melodic interest and feels internally consistent, it doesn't take into account the need to wrap up and prepare the ear for the circulation that immediately follows.
The "fairy fingers" section of Blockhead is taking on a lovely pointillism in my mind's eye. I can see the notes as pulsating dots.
I've been interested for some time in RF's accounts of "realizing" and/or "recognizing" when he's made a decision about something. Something about how describes this process speaks to me. I find real decisions often do not flow from a rigorous, intellectual logic and definite verbal thought-form--"Hear ye, I thusly do make and proclaim this decision for the next step in my life..."--but seem to originate of their own accord elsewhere, from where I'm not sure.
Or maybe it's more about the various "centres" coming into conjunction. If the "decision" involves only the intellectual centre, but the others are not simultaneously in agreement and in accord, this "decision" hardly goes anywhere at all.
There have definitely been times when I've made an important decision in my life, but I've only realized it myself when I see it reflected back to me from others. In one case, I made what seemed, to me, to be a casual comment. But something about the moment, the look on the other person's face, stuck in my memory, and I only knew I had made a bona fide decision about something from how it affected someone else in that moment. I could look back and see it. And yet I couldn't really trace back to some single moment when the decision had been made. I just know from this incident in conversation with another that the decision had been made and was already in motion.
Ten more diary entries to go...
Saturday, March 17, 2007
ear train derailment
Post 79 of 90.
I became obsessed with ear training and never made it to the guitar today. As a diversion, I went back to the beginning level and this time worked on C with a tenor sax sound. C is still what it is and always has been, just dressed up differently, and it fooled me now and then.
Stanley's is apparently not honoring the (unenforceable) smoking ban in Cincinnati, or may be out of jurisdiction--not sure--so the jacket and clothes I wore last night stink, stink, stink!
I looked at the UW link JT sent me, and the cost in tuition for the program is a little over $4K. I'll need to inquire about out-of-state tuition. I fear I may have to live in Washington State for a year to qualify for in-state. Looks like a good program that might be able to get my foot in the door in the technical writing scene, and help me catch a higher income bracket for a relatively small time investment (9 months).
I sometimes think it would have been so much better if I had been required to pay for my own undergraduate tuition. I learned a lot of worthwhile stuff, but I had no concept of the money involved, and I had no ability to consider the future or whether this investment would get me where I wanted to go, even if I had any specific idea of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do.
In middle school and high school, my main concerns were whether I could avoid getting beaten up or intimidated in the hallway that day, and whether I could ever finally hit puberty and escape my nerdy self-loathing. I could say this sort of stuff didn't matter in the long run, but pre-occupation with day-to-day survival meant I found it hard to think about the future. It seemed like it would go on forever. If the warped little psychopathic subculture of my peer group in school was anything like the real world, it seemed inconceivable that I could make it to 30 years of age without going crazy or blowing my brains out because of the pressure.
"A career?! What the &%$ are you talking about?! I just want to be left alone! Get me out of this madhouse!!"
I became obsessed with ear training and never made it to the guitar today. As a diversion, I went back to the beginning level and this time worked on C with a tenor sax sound. C is still what it is and always has been, just dressed up differently, and it fooled me now and then.
Stanley's is apparently not honoring the (unenforceable) smoking ban in Cincinnati, or may be out of jurisdiction--not sure--so the jacket and clothes I wore last night stink, stink, stink!
I looked at the UW link JT sent me, and the cost in tuition for the program is a little over $4K. I'll need to inquire about out-of-state tuition. I fear I may have to live in Washington State for a year to qualify for in-state. Looks like a good program that might be able to get my foot in the door in the technical writing scene, and help me catch a higher income bracket for a relatively small time investment (9 months).
I sometimes think it would have been so much better if I had been required to pay for my own undergraduate tuition. I learned a lot of worthwhile stuff, but I had no concept of the money involved, and I had no ability to consider the future or whether this investment would get me where I wanted to go, even if I had any specific idea of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do.
In middle school and high school, my main concerns were whether I could avoid getting beaten up or intimidated in the hallway that day, and whether I could ever finally hit puberty and escape my nerdy self-loathing. I could say this sort of stuff didn't matter in the long run, but pre-occupation with day-to-day survival meant I found it hard to think about the future. It seemed like it would go on forever. If the warped little psychopathic subculture of my peer group in school was anything like the real world, it seemed inconceivable that I could make it to 30 years of age without going crazy or blowing my brains out because of the pressure.
"A career?! What the &%$ are you talking about?! I just want to be left alone! Get me out of this madhouse!!"
Friday, March 16, 2007
jam band heaven
Post 78 of 90.
I stopped by Stanley's Pub for the first time in a long time to check out that latest happenings in the "jam band" scene.
While I waited at the bar for the music to begin, I chatted up a little hippie girl. I asked her if she was by any chance a belly dancer; she was not, although we both noted the pint of Guinness in her hand and agreed that she was indeed working on her belly.
Both the bands I saw were really good, with some very good players, although by Guitar Craft standards they were doing a lot of things "wrong" with their right hands. One of the guitarists in the first band looked a lot like a young Tom Verlaine of Television, except with a more pointy nose and a receding chin.
All the bands I saw leaned heavily on a James Brown groove for their overall sound, maybe leavened with a bit of a bluesy jazz fusion kind of thing, sort of like a few Derek Trucks Band tracks I've enjoyed over the years, except not nearly as exotic. Having been a latter-day Deadhead, I don't find many jam bands these days making much of a go at melodicism and/or balladry.
The second group had a very good lead guitarist, and they broke up the James Brown groove here and there with some stop-time arrangements and melodic, guitar-lick based "heads." Very good players. This player had the thing of cocking his wrist into an upward posture above the centerline of the forearm, the opposite of the droopy "speed metal wrist" posture.
I have no idea what these groups' names were. They never bothered to stop and say, "Thanks, we are _____________."
Early in the evening, I caught up with JT over the phone. He spotted a technical writing certificate program at University of Washington and sent a link. I'll look at that tomorrow.
I stopped by Stanley's Pub for the first time in a long time to check out that latest happenings in the "jam band" scene.
While I waited at the bar for the music to begin, I chatted up a little hippie girl. I asked her if she was by any chance a belly dancer; she was not, although we both noted the pint of Guinness in her hand and agreed that she was indeed working on her belly.
Both the bands I saw were really good, with some very good players, although by Guitar Craft standards they were doing a lot of things "wrong" with their right hands. One of the guitarists in the first band looked a lot like a young Tom Verlaine of Television, except with a more pointy nose and a receding chin.
All the bands I saw leaned heavily on a James Brown groove for their overall sound, maybe leavened with a bit of a bluesy jazz fusion kind of thing, sort of like a few Derek Trucks Band tracks I've enjoyed over the years, except not nearly as exotic. Having been a latter-day Deadhead, I don't find many jam bands these days making much of a go at melodicism and/or balladry.
The second group had a very good lead guitarist, and they broke up the James Brown groove here and there with some stop-time arrangements and melodic, guitar-lick based "heads." Very good players. This player had the thing of cocking his wrist into an upward posture above the centerline of the forearm, the opposite of the droopy "speed metal wrist" posture.
I have no idea what these groups' names were. They never bothered to stop and say, "Thanks, we are _____________."
Early in the evening, I caught up with JT over the phone. He spotted a technical writing certificate program at University of Washington and sent a link. I'll look at that tomorrow.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
welcome to the ides of march
Post 77 of 90.
The Ides of March are here. Beware!
Hanging out at Lookout Joe, with a phone call to Don to enquire about OGE practice this weekend. Now to some ear training, then a walk, then home to practice.
Following yesterday's rain, the cold has returned. Hazy skies.
After many years of listening "Savoy Truffle" from The White Album, I've finally realized that when George sings, "You'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle...," the "them" he's referring to are your teeth!
The Savoy Truffle must be one hell of a dessert!
The Ides of March are here. Beware!
Hanging out at Lookout Joe, with a phone call to Don to enquire about OGE practice this weekend. Now to some ear training, then a walk, then home to practice.
Following yesterday's rain, the cold has returned. Hazy skies.
After many years of listening "Savoy Truffle" from The White Album, I've finally realized that when George sings, "You'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle...," the "them" he's referring to are your teeth!
The Savoy Truffle must be one hell of a dessert!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
slo-mo tempo
Post 76 of 90.
Rainy day.
I felt disoriented following my day off and kept thinking it was Monday. It felt like a Monday.
Mostly no-tempo practice with the right hand, bringing the pick to the string. Gradual pressure on the string to strike the note is smoother. Some shakiness in my hands afterward when bringing the pick to the next location and touching the string. There are some conflicting signals in my nervous system, I think between my established habit of "going deep" with the pick and the new habit I'm trying to establish of just using the tip.
Today was one of those days with ear training when I couldn't seem to hear much of anything. Spent some time with intentional listening to C and G on the keyboard, then on the guitar, then listening to the C and open G in the opening figure of "Sunmusic."
Rainy day.
I felt disoriented following my day off and kept thinking it was Monday. It felt like a Monday.
Mostly no-tempo practice with the right hand, bringing the pick to the string. Gradual pressure on the string to strike the note is smoother. Some shakiness in my hands afterward when bringing the pick to the next location and touching the string. There are some conflicting signals in my nervous system, I think between my established habit of "going deep" with the pick and the new habit I'm trying to establish of just using the tip.
Today was one of those days with ear training when I couldn't seem to hear much of anything. Spent some time with intentional listening to C and G on the keyboard, then on the guitar, then listening to the C and open G in the opening figure of "Sunmusic."
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
day off
Post 75 of 90.
I took the day off from work to run errands and relax.
At home, I ear trained off and on throughout the day. Now to guitar practice.
I took the day off from work to run errands and relax.
At home, I ear trained off and on throughout the day. Now to guitar practice.
Monday, March 12, 2007
time change blues
Post 74 of 90.
Unremarkable day at work.
After work, I went to see 300 in Newport, KY. A total bloodbath and a visual feast.
I had some time to kill before the movie, so I hung out in the B&N Starbucks nearby and read some of Jason Blume's revised book on songwriting. A lot of good stuff in this book. I definitely need to take some time to work on some songwriting inspired by children's rhymes.
Then to some ear training in Absolute Pitch Blaster. I seem to be retaining the sounds. I have some sort of a baseline established.
I had a laugh today when I found some new slang on a message board. The posters were using the term "cop show" to indicate something was really good. "Dood, that was so cop show!"
I think I'm going to have to start using this now for kicks.
"Our Shimmies & Strings gig was so totally cop show, man!"
Unremarkable day at work.
After work, I went to see 300 in Newport, KY. A total bloodbath and a visual feast.
I had some time to kill before the movie, so I hung out in the B&N Starbucks nearby and read some of Jason Blume's revised book on songwriting. A lot of good stuff in this book. I definitely need to take some time to work on some songwriting inspired by children's rhymes.
Then to some ear training in Absolute Pitch Blaster. I seem to be retaining the sounds. I have some sort of a baseline established.
I had a laugh today when I found some new slang on a message board. The posters were using the term "cop show" to indicate something was really good. "Dood, that was so cop show!"
I think I'm going to have to start using this now for kicks.
"Our Shimmies & Strings gig was so totally cop show, man!"
Sunday, March 11, 2007
the long trek
Post 73 of 90.
I departed Hotel Fleabag about 11am.
The water in the shower was so hard I couldn't seem to rinse completely clean. I feel like I have this layer of schmutz all over me, like I'm a walking bathtub ring.
The drive between Chicago and Indianapolis always seems the longest. I decided to take 290 through downtown Chicago this time, to get a look at the skyline and examine various memories going back to high school marching band trips in the late 80s.
I still remember the feeling I had upon seeing the infamous South Side housing projects for the first time. To my small town eyes and sensibility, they had developed an iconic power over many years as almost mythic vortexes of poverty and despair. All gone now, of course. But it amazed me at the time to see it "in the flesh" and know that real people were living real lives in the shadow of these crumbling buildings.
The mountainous landfill far to the south is still both awe-inspiring and sickening.
I stopped in Broadripple in Indy, and had a dinner at the Egyptian Cafe and Hookah Bar. There was one waitress on duty, also responsible for cooking. She did a good job on the chicken souvlaki, considering she was an avowed vegetarian and claimed she didn't really get how to cook meat.
I sort of miss this area from when I lived there in the mid 90s, but it's also changed a lot, especially in the last 3-4 years.
I read a local, Broadripple community paper while in the restaurant, and it seems as if the powers that be in the community are working to make the area into a walkable "village" sort of community. If my impression is correct, this is a positive step. It won't be long before such a living arrangement will be necessary and will be forced upon a lot of people by circumstances.
A long time ago, I studied a vocabulary course based on exploring the Greek and Latin roots to various words. As I recall, "nostalgia" was a combination of nostrus for "time" and algia, Greek for "pain."
Literally, "the pain of time."
Nostalgia is not a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling at all. It's a painful, hurting sort of feeling. The ancient roots of the word take you close to the heart of what the word means.
This was my day to confront nostalgia and feel the pain of time having passed and wrought changes in all of these places that stood as markers to the flow of my life.
Now to bed.
I departed Hotel Fleabag about 11am.
The water in the shower was so hard I couldn't seem to rinse completely clean. I feel like I have this layer of schmutz all over me, like I'm a walking bathtub ring.
The drive between Chicago and Indianapolis always seems the longest. I decided to take 290 through downtown Chicago this time, to get a look at the skyline and examine various memories going back to high school marching band trips in the late 80s.
I still remember the feeling I had upon seeing the infamous South Side housing projects for the first time. To my small town eyes and sensibility, they had developed an iconic power over many years as almost mythic vortexes of poverty and despair. All gone now, of course. But it amazed me at the time to see it "in the flesh" and know that real people were living real lives in the shadow of these crumbling buildings.
The mountainous landfill far to the south is still both awe-inspiring and sickening.
I stopped in Broadripple in Indy, and had a dinner at the Egyptian Cafe and Hookah Bar. There was one waitress on duty, also responsible for cooking. She did a good job on the chicken souvlaki, considering she was an avowed vegetarian and claimed she didn't really get how to cook meat.
I sort of miss this area from when I lived there in the mid 90s, but it's also changed a lot, especially in the last 3-4 years.
I read a local, Broadripple community paper while in the restaurant, and it seems as if the powers that be in the community are working to make the area into a walkable "village" sort of community. If my impression is correct, this is a positive step. It won't be long before such a living arrangement will be necessary and will be forced upon a lot of people by circumstances.
A long time ago, I studied a vocabulary course based on exploring the Greek and Latin roots to various words. As I recall, "nostalgia" was a combination of nostrus for "time" and algia, Greek for "pain."
Literally, "the pain of time."
Nostalgia is not a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling at all. It's a painful, hurting sort of feeling. The ancient roots of the word take you close to the heart of what the word means.
This was my day to confront nostalgia and feel the pain of time having passed and wrought changes in all of these places that stood as markers to the flow of my life.
Now to bed.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
gig night
Post 72 of 90.
We had a pretty good gig tonight. The circulations in Hope were finally in the neighborhood of how they're supposed to be executed. The dancers welcomed us into their space this time, and it felt like we were all on the same team and part of the same performance.
At this moment, I am generally happy with how I played. Some slip-ups here and there, but other things played well. The physical adjustment I made beginning on Thursday helped a great deal, although I had to make adjustments on the fly here and there as my body tried to slip back into old, more comfortable habits.
There will be much discussion within the team about this gig, so I'm going to leave it for now.
Scott's wife Ann was kind enough to take some pictures with my camera. Thanks, Ann!
I had a moment on the drive up, only about two miles from home, when a squirrel ran out in front of the car. I drove right over it and heard a thump! underneath the car. I always hate that sick feeling I've had over the years when I've hit an animal, so I was very happy and relieved when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the squirrel scampering off into woods, still alive. That sound must have been from its tail hitting something underneath the car, and not from a full-blown automotive crushing.
The drive was long, as usual.
Don is driving back tonight, but I'm staying at Hotel Fleabag in Melrose Park. I should give them some slack since they're renovating the place. And it's relatively cheap.
Tomorrow will probably be a long day.
We had a pretty good gig tonight. The circulations in Hope were finally in the neighborhood of how they're supposed to be executed. The dancers welcomed us into their space this time, and it felt like we were all on the same team and part of the same performance.
At this moment, I am generally happy with how I played. Some slip-ups here and there, but other things played well. The physical adjustment I made beginning on Thursday helped a great deal, although I had to make adjustments on the fly here and there as my body tried to slip back into old, more comfortable habits.
There will be much discussion within the team about this gig, so I'm going to leave it for now.
Scott's wife Ann was kind enough to take some pictures with my camera. Thanks, Ann!
I had a moment on the drive up, only about two miles from home, when a squirrel ran out in front of the car. I drove right over it and heard a thump! underneath the car. I always hate that sick feeling I've had over the years when I've hit an animal, so I was very happy and relieved when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the squirrel scampering off into woods, still alive. That sound must have been from its tail hitting something underneath the car, and not from a full-blown automotive crushing.
The drive was long, as usual.
Don is driving back tonight, but I'm staying at Hotel Fleabag in Melrose Park. I should give them some slack since they're renovating the place. And it's relatively cheap.
Tomorrow will probably be a long day.
Friday, March 9, 2007
adjustment
Post 71 of 90.
Last night I adjusted the height of my guitar and worked on getting more of an angle with the neck. My playing immediately jumped up a level in ease and speed. The "fairy fingers" section of Blockhead was suddenly playable, much better than before.
I guess physical relationship to the guitar must have drifted imperceptibly over time from the last time I met with CG and RF. And it always seems to drift toward some arrangement that will allow me to wear the guitar lower (although I've begun to wonder if my strap is perhaps perpetually slipping a little bit). I still want to rock and roll, I guess.
I do have to be careful. If I'm not getting this position exactly right, the edge of the soundboard pinches a vein and cuts off the blood circulation to my arm.
Tonight, I was struggling a bit to find the same feeling of ease I had last night. My body kept wanting to slip back into established habits, but it was still much better.
Early in the evening, I changed strings and cut some new picks from my collection of triangular Fender picks. I scored the plastic with a knife, then used shears to cut the excess plastic, followed by sanding with varying grades of sandpaper to get the surfaces good and smooth. I breathed in a tiny amount of dust while sanding, and it had a peculiar smell and taste. The tips are very sharp, and I found only the tiniest amount of the pick was necessary to get a good note. On the downside, I'm also noticing a scrape! sound when I pick the high G string.
The wear pattern on my old picks shows that I often pick with up to a quarter inch depth on the pick. Way too much, but this habit is going to take a while to address.
Last night I adjusted the height of my guitar and worked on getting more of an angle with the neck. My playing immediately jumped up a level in ease and speed. The "fairy fingers" section of Blockhead was suddenly playable, much better than before.
I guess physical relationship to the guitar must have drifted imperceptibly over time from the last time I met with CG and RF. And it always seems to drift toward some arrangement that will allow me to wear the guitar lower (although I've begun to wonder if my strap is perhaps perpetually slipping a little bit). I still want to rock and roll, I guess.
I do have to be careful. If I'm not getting this position exactly right, the edge of the soundboard pinches a vein and cuts off the blood circulation to my arm.
Tonight, I was struggling a bit to find the same feeling of ease I had last night. My body kept wanting to slip back into established habits, but it was still much better.
Early in the evening, I changed strings and cut some new picks from my collection of triangular Fender picks. I scored the plastic with a knife, then used shears to cut the excess plastic, followed by sanding with varying grades of sandpaper to get the surfaces good and smooth. I breathed in a tiny amount of dust while sanding, and it had a peculiar smell and taste. The tips are very sharp, and I found only the tiniest amount of the pick was necessary to get a good note. On the downside, I'm also noticing a scrape! sound when I pick the high G string.
The wear pattern on my old picks shows that I often pick with up to a quarter inch depth on the pick. Way too much, but this habit is going to take a while to address.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
practice makes permanent
Post 70 of 90.
The level of persistent tension in my body when I try to play at faster tempos is frustrating. It seems like no-tempo work has helped a little, but at some point, when you've figured out how to walk, you need to figure out how to run. I still don't quite know how to run. I begin flailing about in all sorts of ways.
I occasionally think about how Jerry Garcia had a pronounced shake in his left hand when fretting chords. At one point, I thought it was due to some kind of drug-induced neurological damage, since it was evident in his movements in his latter twilight years when I was going to Grateful Dead concerts. But then I saw footage of him playing guitar as a young folkie in the early 60s, and the exact same shake was there, so I can only guess he somehow got in that habit when he was first learning to play and it persisted for the rest of his life.
When I saw Richard Lloyd at Southgate House several years ago, I was struck by how the way he held the guitar and physically related to it was exactly the same as when he was a young man in Television in the 70s. I had this experience where the image of the young Richard Lloyd in my mind was transposed onto the middle-aged man standing in front of me in real time. The relationship between them was clear--the small effects of time and ravage had accumulated during an unbroken continuity leading from the young man to the older man--but it was also disorienting. Everything was different, but everything was the same. His playing was masterful, but also clearly an outgrowth or outcropping of habits he had established many years ago as a beginner. His relationship to the guitar was exactly the same, just more so.
Which leads me to a favorite Dwight Eisenhower quote (which I have not fact-checked, but still admire, even if it's a hoax, for its uncanny resemblance to a Zen koan):
"Things are more like they are now than they have been at any time in the past."
Could it be the accumulated neurological-physical-linguistic habits of a person are the person?
I sometimes wonder about this in the context of Alexander Technique and the sort of confrontation you experience with your physical self. And as I write that, I wonder about my choice of "confrontation," as if my physical self is other and is not me, and I must conquer "it."
The way I play guitar now and relate to the instrument is very different from how I used to play. It's not a total discontinuity, I suppose, but when I've occasionally stapped on the strat and slung it low as an experiment, it's like there's a different person and a different way of feeling and experiencing waiting there for me, always present but dormant. He's right there where I left him. He hasn't gone anywhere.
The level of persistent tension in my body when I try to play at faster tempos is frustrating. It seems like no-tempo work has helped a little, but at some point, when you've figured out how to walk, you need to figure out how to run. I still don't quite know how to run. I begin flailing about in all sorts of ways.
I occasionally think about how Jerry Garcia had a pronounced shake in his left hand when fretting chords. At one point, I thought it was due to some kind of drug-induced neurological damage, since it was evident in his movements in his latter twilight years when I was going to Grateful Dead concerts. But then I saw footage of him playing guitar as a young folkie in the early 60s, and the exact same shake was there, so I can only guess he somehow got in that habit when he was first learning to play and it persisted for the rest of his life.
When I saw Richard Lloyd at Southgate House several years ago, I was struck by how the way he held the guitar and physically related to it was exactly the same as when he was a young man in Television in the 70s. I had this experience where the image of the young Richard Lloyd in my mind was transposed onto the middle-aged man standing in front of me in real time. The relationship between them was clear--the small effects of time and ravage had accumulated during an unbroken continuity leading from the young man to the older man--but it was also disorienting. Everything was different, but everything was the same. His playing was masterful, but also clearly an outgrowth or outcropping of habits he had established many years ago as a beginner. His relationship to the guitar was exactly the same, just more so.
Which leads me to a favorite Dwight Eisenhower quote (which I have not fact-checked, but still admire, even if it's a hoax, for its uncanny resemblance to a Zen koan):
"Things are more like they are now than they have been at any time in the past."
Could it be the accumulated neurological-physical-linguistic habits of a person are the person?
I sometimes wonder about this in the context of Alexander Technique and the sort of confrontation you experience with your physical self. And as I write that, I wonder about my choice of "confrontation," as if my physical self is other and is not me, and I must conquer "it."
The way I play guitar now and relate to the instrument is very different from how I used to play. It's not a total discontinuity, I suppose, but when I've occasionally stapped on the strat and slung it low as an experiment, it's like there's a different person and a different way of feeling and experiencing waiting there for me, always present but dormant. He's right there where I left him. He hasn't gone anywhere.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
ear confusion
Post 69 of 90.
My ear is quickly picking up on the G chroma. The G currently in play in Absolute Pitch Blaster is a G4, I think.
Things get confusing as the program switches back and forth and asks me to decide if C or G is present in a certain chord, cluster, or melodic fragment (and sometimes the pitch in question isn't there at all). Sometimes I need to focus and listen for the C, but a G is present and it sticks out to the point where it's actually a distraction. Occasionally the G lights up as it passes by, but I'm supposed to be looking for a C, and I screw up. My ear still also hasn't quite got a handle on the higher octaves of C, C5 and up. I think it tops out at C7, which is so washed out it's almost just a noise rather than a discernible pitch.
When I sit down with the guitar, I make a point of listening to the notes on the guitar to see if I can hear the chroma when it's dressed up in the guitar timbre. Sometimes I can hear it, sometimes I can't. On both the guitar and keyboard (with a piano sound), if I listen to C and G as a harmonic interval, the Perfect 5th relative pitch effect is so strong it pulls my ear up away from the deeper sound of the pitch chroma.
I wish my relative pitch was better. Burge says relative pitch is helpful, in the sense that if your ear is already comfortable on that surface level of sound, it's easier for your ear to dive in deeper to hear the pitch colors underneath. My ear is becoming more alert in general from this work, but relative pitch effects will still fool me now and then. The C melody word (a snippet of Bach melody) lays out a very clear C tonality, so I still hear C very strongly as a root/1/do of a key, so sometimes when there's an arpeggio or melodic fragment that spotlights, for example, A as the root, I'll hear that keynote effect and think I'm hearing C.
When working on Sun Music, I've been trying to direct some of my attention to hear the chroma of that open G, but there's so much other stuff going on with fretting and cross-picking and directing relaxation and so on, I quickly lose track of it. I retain an overall sense of how the notes are unfolding, but individual pitches just kind of wash together.
My ear is quickly picking up on the G chroma. The G currently in play in Absolute Pitch Blaster is a G4, I think.
Things get confusing as the program switches back and forth and asks me to decide if C or G is present in a certain chord, cluster, or melodic fragment (and sometimes the pitch in question isn't there at all). Sometimes I need to focus and listen for the C, but a G is present and it sticks out to the point where it's actually a distraction. Occasionally the G lights up as it passes by, but I'm supposed to be looking for a C, and I screw up. My ear still also hasn't quite got a handle on the higher octaves of C, C5 and up. I think it tops out at C7, which is so washed out it's almost just a noise rather than a discernible pitch.
When I sit down with the guitar, I make a point of listening to the notes on the guitar to see if I can hear the chroma when it's dressed up in the guitar timbre. Sometimes I can hear it, sometimes I can't. On both the guitar and keyboard (with a piano sound), if I listen to C and G as a harmonic interval, the Perfect 5th relative pitch effect is so strong it pulls my ear up away from the deeper sound of the pitch chroma.
I wish my relative pitch was better. Burge says relative pitch is helpful, in the sense that if your ear is already comfortable on that surface level of sound, it's easier for your ear to dive in deeper to hear the pitch colors underneath. My ear is becoming more alert in general from this work, but relative pitch effects will still fool me now and then. The C melody word (a snippet of Bach melody) lays out a very clear C tonality, so I still hear C very strongly as a root/1/do of a key, so sometimes when there's an arpeggio or melodic fragment that spotlights, for example, A as the root, I'll hear that keynote effect and think I'm hearing C.
When working on Sun Music, I've been trying to direct some of my attention to hear the chroma of that open G, but there's so much other stuff going on with fretting and cross-picking and directing relaxation and so on, I quickly lose track of it. I retain an overall sense of how the notes are unfolding, but individual pitches just kind of wash together.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
bursitis?
Post 68 of 90.
The pain in the joint of my left shoulder has been persistent today. When I put my attention into that joint, I can feel the outlines of a layer of tissue that is irritated.
During my Alexander Technique lesson, NS told me he could feel some increased resistance in that shoulder when he was moving it around. When lifting my shoulder up there was some tightness and pain at the elbow similar to the feeling of pain behind my knees when I haven't been keeping up with my stretching routine.
I definitely felt better following my lesson, although I decided it was better to take a day off from guitar and mostly work on ear training. I mostly just let my left arm lie in my lap and used it as little as possible. My working theory here is that the stiffness was my bodies way of immobilizing the joint to help it heal, so maybe it's better if I don't push it.
The pain in the joint of my left shoulder has been persistent today. When I put my attention into that joint, I can feel the outlines of a layer of tissue that is irritated.
During my Alexander Technique lesson, NS told me he could feel some increased resistance in that shoulder when he was moving it around. When lifting my shoulder up there was some tightness and pain at the elbow similar to the feeling of pain behind my knees when I haven't been keeping up with my stretching routine.
I definitely felt better following my lesson, although I decided it was better to take a day off from guitar and mostly work on ear training. I mostly just let my left arm lie in my lap and used it as little as possible. My working theory here is that the stiffness was my bodies way of immobilizing the joint to help it heal, so maybe it's better if I don't push it.
Monday, March 5, 2007
sore shoulder
Post 67 of 90.
The long rehearsal on Saturday really did a number on my left shoulder. I'm not used to playing for five hours at a stretch, and by the end of rehearsal my ability to inhibit and direct had been thoroughly overwhelmed. There's actually some pain in the joint.
The long rehearsal on Saturday really did a number on my left shoulder. I'm not used to playing for five hours at a stretch, and by the end of rehearsal my ability to inhibit and direct had been thoroughly overwhelmed. There's actually some pain in the joint.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
the big nada
Post 66 of 90.
Another day of catching up on sleep and laundry.
I ear trained periodically throughout the day. I'm beginning to get the hang of the G chroma in Absolute Pitch Blaster. I'm pretty much in the same area at this level as I was when I was beginning my work on C many months ago. I frequently found myself forgetting what I was listening for. A lot of the same issues arising, but this time I recognize where I am, and I know there is hope. But it's also discouraging to think I will have at least 10 more opportunities to be in this place before I've completed work on all 12 notes.
I seemed to make the most progress when instead of worrying about what level I was on at the moment or making any effort at all, I just listened, enjoyed the process, and played the game. Any sort of angst or straining just sets you back.
Don mentioned yesterday that my guitar was positioned a lot differently than the others, with the neck lower and more horizontal. He told me I looked comfortable, but comfortable does not equal correct. The most screwy and damaging postures can sometimes be experienced as "comfortable." The position of my right arm resting on the guitar has gradually shifted until it seems like I'm sort of reaching around the guitar from behind. I would actually prefer if the neck of the guitar was a bit more angled. Maybe I'm in need of an adjustment from Curt or someone else on a course.
Another day of catching up on sleep and laundry.
I ear trained periodically throughout the day. I'm beginning to get the hang of the G chroma in Absolute Pitch Blaster. I'm pretty much in the same area at this level as I was when I was beginning my work on C many months ago. I frequently found myself forgetting what I was listening for. A lot of the same issues arising, but this time I recognize where I am, and I know there is hope. But it's also discouraging to think I will have at least 10 more opportunities to be in this place before I've completed work on all 12 notes.
I seemed to make the most progress when instead of worrying about what level I was on at the moment or making any effort at all, I just listened, enjoyed the process, and played the game. Any sort of angst or straining just sets you back.
Don mentioned yesterday that my guitar was positioned a lot differently than the others, with the neck lower and more horizontal. He told me I looked comfortable, but comfortable does not equal correct. The most screwy and damaging postures can sometimes be experienced as "comfortable." The position of my right arm resting on the guitar has gradually shifted until it seems like I'm sort of reaching around the guitar from behind. I would actually prefer if the neck of the guitar was a bit more angled. Maybe I'm in need of an adjustment from Curt or someone else on a course.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
chicago circle rehearsal
Post 65 of 90.
Within 20 minutes of being on the road, it began snowing. I wanted to kick myself for not checking the weather forecasts.
Shortly after that, I got a call from Don on the cell phone. He had also run into snow on I70 heading into Indianapolis, and he had just recovered from disaster when his SUV slid completely off the road into the median. He was able to guide the vehicle back on the road and was unscathed, but it was a freaky moment for him. Luckily, nobody else was close enough to be drawn in, nobody was sitting in the median, and he was nowhere near a railing, wall, or bridge abutment.
I465 around Indy was a mess, and the cops were cleaning up numerous wrecks, including one on the ramp where it looked like the cars had collided and then somehow stuck together and spun around so they were facing back down the ramp. It must have just happened, since there were only four or five other cars backed up on the ramp with me.
Once I was on I465 itself, I saw cars here and there crumpled against the walls to the side of the highway. Traffic was slow, but some people were still making risky maneuvers. At one point, I drove faster than was probably safe just to put some distance between myself and rest of this mass of cars.
We met at the the T&A north of Indy around 8:30, about half an hour later than we had planned on. We loaded up Don's SUV and headed out. North of Indianapolis, the weather cleared up and we finally saw some salt trucks on the road (we speculated the storm had caught the highway department by surprise in other parts of the state). There were a few slippery spots here and there, but it wasn't too bad.
Even with the delays, we made it to Adrian's studio right on time at 11 o'clock.
We worked on Loren's "Road Trip" piece, and the work in rehearsal cleared up a lot of things for me. Then we moved to practicing standing up and plugged in in the arc formation we'll be adopting at the gig. Everybody had their feedback busters installed by this point and had found the trick of loosening the low C string slightly to get it into the soundhole.
It was very hard to hear. We were monitoring through the PA mains, and so you were either having your brains blown out by the sonic death ray emanating from the speaker cones, or, if you were off-access to the speaker, you were struggling to hear and discern which plinky, weedy note in the overall mass was yours. During circulations, I found myself falling back on the strategy of watching hands to know for sure when to play. I could hear all the notes being played, but I often couldn't tell without looking who had played it. During ensemble pieces, I could feel my pick against the strings and could feel the notes resonating through the body of the guitar, but I couldn't tell which note coming out of the speakers was mine. Or I just couldn't find my sound at all. Very weird. I twiddled on the preamp, but couldn't get anything dialed in.
The overall sound was often very good. I just couldn't tell which sound within that was mine a lot of the time.
Big free-associative digression...
There's something I've noticed about groups of people, although it's incredibly pronounced in rock bands, where ego and fantasy generally rule the day: very often, issues will remain intractable unless a credible "outside authority" is brought in--usually a producer, sound engineer or some other person with credentials who doesn't give a sh*t at the end of the day whether he's losing status at the high school or not. Once a balance of power or a pecking order is established in a group--and some sort of balance or pecking order will invariably arise in a group of human beings--it is often very difficult for even necessary changes to be implemented. Established politics and alliances constrain action, and few people are selfless or objective enough to get past it.
"Hey, I'm the drummer! Without me, you don't have a band! If you irritate me enough with your stupid suggestions, I will leave and you can waste as much time as you like fruitlessly searching for a replacement..."
"Hey, I'm the singer! Why should I care what the lowly keyboard player thinks? Who cares if he has a degree in music? Heck, I'll ignore his suggestions to the group because he has a degree in music! Besides, my girlfriend has told me I'm the most important one in the group..."
"I'm not going to listen to the guitarist! He stepped on my foot three years ago, the creep! Besides, the guy is clueless about picking up chicks. Would you listen to anything some chump like that had to say?"
Back to our regularly scheduled program...
During our work in the Cloud of Unknowing section of Trapiche, some interesting stuff happened. JN called some chords on the harmonic minor circulation, and we wound up with a lot of notes a half-step apart. It actually created this amazing, clustery avante-garde classical sort of sound, like Varese or something. This continued during a very jagged Cloud of Unknowing improvisation where the dynamics were jumping up and down in the coolest way (I thought). At one point, Don played a tremeloed gliss at the very tip-top of his fretboard, and everybody stopped cold for an instant in unison, as if we had been conducted into it.
As always, the drive back was long.
I ran into the snow again when I got south and east of Indy. I guess this band of bad weather had been hanging there all day between Indianapolis and Shelbyville. It snowed so hard at one point that I was having trouble seeing the road, both because it was buried and because of the wall of snowflakes in front of the headlights cut visibility down to about 15 feet. I don't think I got above 30 mph during the small eternity it took to get through this area.
Within 20 minutes of being on the road, it began snowing. I wanted to kick myself for not checking the weather forecasts.
Shortly after that, I got a call from Don on the cell phone. He had also run into snow on I70 heading into Indianapolis, and he had just recovered from disaster when his SUV slid completely off the road into the median. He was able to guide the vehicle back on the road and was unscathed, but it was a freaky moment for him. Luckily, nobody else was close enough to be drawn in, nobody was sitting in the median, and he was nowhere near a railing, wall, or bridge abutment.
I465 around Indy was a mess, and the cops were cleaning up numerous wrecks, including one on the ramp where it looked like the cars had collided and then somehow stuck together and spun around so they were facing back down the ramp. It must have just happened, since there were only four or five other cars backed up on the ramp with me.
Once I was on I465 itself, I saw cars here and there crumpled against the walls to the side of the highway. Traffic was slow, but some people were still making risky maneuvers. At one point, I drove faster than was probably safe just to put some distance between myself and rest of this mass of cars.
We met at the the T&A north of Indy around 8:30, about half an hour later than we had planned on. We loaded up Don's SUV and headed out. North of Indianapolis, the weather cleared up and we finally saw some salt trucks on the road (we speculated the storm had caught the highway department by surprise in other parts of the state). There were a few slippery spots here and there, but it wasn't too bad.
Even with the delays, we made it to Adrian's studio right on time at 11 o'clock.
We worked on Loren's "Road Trip" piece, and the work in rehearsal cleared up a lot of things for me. Then we moved to practicing standing up and plugged in in the arc formation we'll be adopting at the gig. Everybody had their feedback busters installed by this point and had found the trick of loosening the low C string slightly to get it into the soundhole.
It was very hard to hear. We were monitoring through the PA mains, and so you were either having your brains blown out by the sonic death ray emanating from the speaker cones, or, if you were off-access to the speaker, you were struggling to hear and discern which plinky, weedy note in the overall mass was yours. During circulations, I found myself falling back on the strategy of watching hands to know for sure when to play. I could hear all the notes being played, but I often couldn't tell without looking who had played it. During ensemble pieces, I could feel my pick against the strings and could feel the notes resonating through the body of the guitar, but I couldn't tell which note coming out of the speakers was mine. Or I just couldn't find my sound at all. Very weird. I twiddled on the preamp, but couldn't get anything dialed in.
The overall sound was often very good. I just couldn't tell which sound within that was mine a lot of the time.
Big free-associative digression...
There's something I've noticed about groups of people, although it's incredibly pronounced in rock bands, where ego and fantasy generally rule the day: very often, issues will remain intractable unless a credible "outside authority" is brought in--usually a producer, sound engineer or some other person with credentials who doesn't give a sh*t at the end of the day whether he's losing status at the high school or not. Once a balance of power or a pecking order is established in a group--and some sort of balance or pecking order will invariably arise in a group of human beings--it is often very difficult for even necessary changes to be implemented. Established politics and alliances constrain action, and few people are selfless or objective enough to get past it.
"Hey, I'm the drummer! Without me, you don't have a band! If you irritate me enough with your stupid suggestions, I will leave and you can waste as much time as you like fruitlessly searching for a replacement..."
"Hey, I'm the singer! Why should I care what the lowly keyboard player thinks? Who cares if he has a degree in music? Heck, I'll ignore his suggestions to the group because he has a degree in music! Besides, my girlfriend has told me I'm the most important one in the group..."
"I'm not going to listen to the guitarist! He stepped on my foot three years ago, the creep! Besides, the guy is clueless about picking up chicks. Would you listen to anything some chump like that had to say?"
Back to our regularly scheduled program...
During our work in the Cloud of Unknowing section of Trapiche, some interesting stuff happened. JN called some chords on the harmonic minor circulation, and we wound up with a lot of notes a half-step apart. It actually created this amazing, clustery avante-garde classical sort of sound, like Varese or something. This continued during a very jagged Cloud of Unknowing improvisation where the dynamics were jumping up and down in the coolest way (I thought). At one point, Don played a tremeloed gliss at the very tip-top of his fretboard, and everybody stopped cold for an instant in unison, as if we had been conducted into it.
As always, the drive back was long.
I ran into the snow again when I got south and east of Indy. I guess this band of bad weather had been hanging there all day between Indianapolis and Shelbyville. It snowed so hard at one point that I was having trouble seeing the road, both because it was buried and because of the wall of snowflakes in front of the headlights cut visibility down to about 15 feet. I don't think I got above 30 mph during the small eternity it took to get through this area.
Friday, March 2, 2007
gig soon
Post 64 of 90.
The power went out at work today. This has been happening with noticeably greater frequency. Sort of makes you wonder.
The Ides of March will be here soon. Beware!
Now to practice.
The power went out at work today. This has been happening with noticeably greater frequency. Sort of makes you wonder.
The Ides of March will be here soon. Beware!
Now to practice.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
transformative increments
Post 63 of 90.
I just "graduated" in Absolute Pitch Blaster from C identification drills, and now G has been added to the drills. It's a whole new world of weirdness. My decision to work with the exercises regularly throughout the day to keep the sounds fresh in my ear seems to have worked out. Now I need to keep at it.
At some point during the last round of exercises tonight, I recognized that all along I have not quite trusted myself to hear the pitch accurately, even as the tendency of C in all octaves to "light up" and announce itself within my consciousness was growing. Having recognized this aspect, I was able to let go a little bit and relax into a more trusting mindset with myself.
I feel there is something to be learned and remembered deeply here. I think there's also an aspect of self-trust required when performing on the guitar. I had that moment a while back during a performance with Don at Un Mundo when I suddenly had absolute certainty of my picking, and this also I think represents an aspect of trust I need to develop with myself. I need to trust that the things I'm practicing will be there for me when I need it, and a lot of the shaky fear I've experienced when performing is tied to this. On a very deep level, I sometimes play in a very hesitant and shaky way out of not trusting myself and the work I've done on the instrument.
Learning to trust yourself--over just about anything, I suppose--is easier said than done. You have to learn to recognize that feeling of mistrust. Then you also have to know what it feels like to exist in a state of trust. It may well be that the absence of mistrust is not the same thing as actually possessing that trust for yourself.
So I have some yardstick from that performance of what true confidence and self-trust feels like. Just a little flash, but maybe enough to work with.
Now that I've made some progress with the ear training, I'm reminded of the analogy circulating in the Crafty community some time back regarding the difference between simmering and bringing your work to a boil. In this context, I also think of RF's comments that a certain "intensity of application" is necessary, as well as the aphorism that small increments are transformative.
So, I've been hoping to bring both the ear training and my guitar playing to a boil, to find that intensity of application and cross over those remaining small increments to achieve transformation.
Maybe it's possible.
I've also been thinking about David L. Burge's comments in his perfect pitch course about changes of state, that as you work on your ear, in the beginning it's like a block of ice. You keep adding more and more heat, and then suddenly you arrive at the point when just a little more pushes the ice over the threshold so that it changes state and turns into water. I'm looking for that final increment that will cause my ear to unfreeze and wake up. I have a lot more listening to do, but I'm encouraged.
He also made an interesting analogy to laser light, that when a small percentage of the light waves in a laser beam begin to fall into step, that tiny bit spreads and brings the vast remainder into coherence.
Transformative increments.
On some level, I'm actually more interested in aspects of ear training and listening than I am with guitar playing. Or, stated another way, I recognize the futility of enormous physical chops if my ear is asleep. What's the point of attempting to improvise, for instance, if you can't hear and understand the musical language? What kind of conversation and communication is possible?
My key transformative moment in developing this interest occurred circa 1994 or so. I was jamming with a bunch of guys who were all schooled musicians with fusion chops (that they allowed me to jam with them strikes me now as so unbelievably generous it kind of blows my mind). Things were moving along. I had some sense of the key and therefore could apply a scale somewhat by rote, well enough to sound vaguely musical, when suddenly everything changed.
The horn player in the group (a perfect pitch possessor) became enthused, picked up his horn, and jumped in. He went up to the mic and played a note, and in an instant I shifted states and knew what the note was and where it was on the fretboard (the B at the 12th fret, second string in OST). My hand went to the fret and I played the note back at him. He played a short descending run starting on that B. Time seemed to stop. And I found myself suddenly able to hold that run of notes in my mind like a string of pearls--an actual visual representation that I could see inside my mind. I recognized the B and then followed the notes down--whole step, half step, whole step...ah, a mixolydian scale! So I played that back at him. We went on trading licks like this for several long moments.
Then it was over.
The moment had passed, but I knew I wanted to get back there. I came to believe this superhuman ability to hear all these musical details was somewhere inside all along, and somehow the threshold had dropped and made it available to my normally anemic musical connection. Now my job was to find the means to bring all of this subconscious perceptual ability into my regular conscious awareness.
In more Crafty parlance, I had experienced a state, but I would now have to work to earn the station, to make it that level of experience my home. Otherwise, I was just a visitor.
Now I need to get out of here and get the Ovation in my hands. Time to go in search of more of those transformative increments.
One other thing occurs to me before I go regarding the kindness of these "real" musicians in allowing me to play with them and have this experience. It seems to me that small acts of kindness should not be underestimated. For some time, I've had the thought that the real damage in relationships between people often happens in the small moments, but the flip side to that is that small acts of kindness can have a positive impact way beyond their seeming importance in whatever momentary context they are enacted.
There have been small acts of kindness from others that have completely changed my life for the better, and I don't know if any of these people have ever realized the positive impact they had.
And I hope those I've harmed over the years with my own acts of inattention and callousness (or even thoughtless cruelty) can find it within themselves to forgive me.
I just "graduated" in Absolute Pitch Blaster from C identification drills, and now G has been added to the drills. It's a whole new world of weirdness. My decision to work with the exercises regularly throughout the day to keep the sounds fresh in my ear seems to have worked out. Now I need to keep at it.
At some point during the last round of exercises tonight, I recognized that all along I have not quite trusted myself to hear the pitch accurately, even as the tendency of C in all octaves to "light up" and announce itself within my consciousness was growing. Having recognized this aspect, I was able to let go a little bit and relax into a more trusting mindset with myself.
I feel there is something to be learned and remembered deeply here. I think there's also an aspect of self-trust required when performing on the guitar. I had that moment a while back during a performance with Don at Un Mundo when I suddenly had absolute certainty of my picking, and this also I think represents an aspect of trust I need to develop with myself. I need to trust that the things I'm practicing will be there for me when I need it, and a lot of the shaky fear I've experienced when performing is tied to this. On a very deep level, I sometimes play in a very hesitant and shaky way out of not trusting myself and the work I've done on the instrument.
Learning to trust yourself--over just about anything, I suppose--is easier said than done. You have to learn to recognize that feeling of mistrust. Then you also have to know what it feels like to exist in a state of trust. It may well be that the absence of mistrust is not the same thing as actually possessing that trust for yourself.
So I have some yardstick from that performance of what true confidence and self-trust feels like. Just a little flash, but maybe enough to work with.
Now that I've made some progress with the ear training, I'm reminded of the analogy circulating in the Crafty community some time back regarding the difference between simmering and bringing your work to a boil. In this context, I also think of RF's comments that a certain "intensity of application" is necessary, as well as the aphorism that small increments are transformative.
So, I've been hoping to bring both the ear training and my guitar playing to a boil, to find that intensity of application and cross over those remaining small increments to achieve transformation.
Maybe it's possible.
I've also been thinking about David L. Burge's comments in his perfect pitch course about changes of state, that as you work on your ear, in the beginning it's like a block of ice. You keep adding more and more heat, and then suddenly you arrive at the point when just a little more pushes the ice over the threshold so that it changes state and turns into water. I'm looking for that final increment that will cause my ear to unfreeze and wake up. I have a lot more listening to do, but I'm encouraged.
He also made an interesting analogy to laser light, that when a small percentage of the light waves in a laser beam begin to fall into step, that tiny bit spreads and brings the vast remainder into coherence.
Transformative increments.
On some level, I'm actually more interested in aspects of ear training and listening than I am with guitar playing. Or, stated another way, I recognize the futility of enormous physical chops if my ear is asleep. What's the point of attempting to improvise, for instance, if you can't hear and understand the musical language? What kind of conversation and communication is possible?
My key transformative moment in developing this interest occurred circa 1994 or so. I was jamming with a bunch of guys who were all schooled musicians with fusion chops (that they allowed me to jam with them strikes me now as so unbelievably generous it kind of blows my mind). Things were moving along. I had some sense of the key and therefore could apply a scale somewhat by rote, well enough to sound vaguely musical, when suddenly everything changed.
The horn player in the group (a perfect pitch possessor) became enthused, picked up his horn, and jumped in. He went up to the mic and played a note, and in an instant I shifted states and knew what the note was and where it was on the fretboard (the B at the 12th fret, second string in OST). My hand went to the fret and I played the note back at him. He played a short descending run starting on that B. Time seemed to stop. And I found myself suddenly able to hold that run of notes in my mind like a string of pearls--an actual visual representation that I could see inside my mind. I recognized the B and then followed the notes down--whole step, half step, whole step...ah, a mixolydian scale! So I played that back at him. We went on trading licks like this for several long moments.
Then it was over.
The moment had passed, but I knew I wanted to get back there. I came to believe this superhuman ability to hear all these musical details was somewhere inside all along, and somehow the threshold had dropped and made it available to my normally anemic musical connection. Now my job was to find the means to bring all of this subconscious perceptual ability into my regular conscious awareness.
In more Crafty parlance, I had experienced a state, but I would now have to work to earn the station, to make it that level of experience my home. Otherwise, I was just a visitor.
Now I need to get out of here and get the Ovation in my hands. Time to go in search of more of those transformative increments.
One other thing occurs to me before I go regarding the kindness of these "real" musicians in allowing me to play with them and have this experience. It seems to me that small acts of kindness should not be underestimated. For some time, I've had the thought that the real damage in relationships between people often happens in the small moments, but the flip side to that is that small acts of kindness can have a positive impact way beyond their seeming importance in whatever momentary context they are enacted.
There have been small acts of kindness from others that have completely changed my life for the better, and I don't know if any of these people have ever realized the positive impact they had.
And I hope those I've harmed over the years with my own acts of inattention and callousness (or even thoughtless cruelty) can find it within themselves to forgive me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)