fact--there is hope!

It snowed a few days ago, and I took a cell phone pic of a snowy University Way and 45th when I stepped out of Trabant Coffeeshop...

Today, I'm posting from Mr. Spot's Chai House in Ballard.

Hope for the House Team Circle

We had a wonderful moment in the house team circle meeting today, a moment when everybody played their notes in time!

At least as individuals.

GM and I were discussing the next exercise variation while the metronome clicked away in the background. While we talked, Igor K played the arpeggio figure under examination, and I noticed that he was dead on to the metronome, with his notes evenly spaced. Igor stopped, and then MB played the figure dead on to the metronome. Then GM played it dead on. Then I played it dead on.

Dang! How did that happen?

Then we played it as a group, and we were all over the place.

So, we now know we can nail it when we play the figure solo. This means we have hope.

All we have to do now is be able to play it dead on as a group. I'm not sure how this will happen. Eventually, if we play together long enough, I suppose it'll happen.

Sleeping on Air

I got an air mattress from my folks, and now I'm sleeping in queen-sized plushness instead of in a sleeping bag on a concrete floor. Progress!

Morning Pages

I've taken up Morning Pages again. I've been struggling with a "stuck" sort of feeling, and I'm hoping this can help. The various practices I adopted from The Artist's Way so many years ago seemed to help. Around 1995, I was in a serious rut. I found that book, began working, and things got better. Who knows?

Granted, my life has been changing at warp speed since I left Cincinnati and moved to Seattle. I have only lived here since September, but it feels like long time.

Although, "feeling stuck" maybe doesn't quite capture it. In a way, it's more about having the strength to hold on and stay in the boat as it flies over the rapids. When things really get going, something in me wants to throw on the brakes and call a time out.

This feeling of "Whoah! Wait a minute there!" and the internal personal resistance that ensues whenever things start to really move may be my own special form of "stuckness." It's one of my personal foibles that I happen to be able to see, sort of, out of the corner of my inner eye.

There are others, but this one has been a persistent gremlin for a long time and will probably always be with me--whether it actually counts as part of "who I am" is another question. I actually experience it as a sort of otherness within myself.

I can begin to see it, but doing something about it is something else entirely, and I'm stubborn.

I've found this manifesting in several ways, lately. I'd rather not get into tiresome details. Just take my word for it.

BR's Challenge

In the TTA meeting today, BR offered us the challenge to look at our guitar playing, pick a specific aspect that we want to improve, and do something about it. It could be something we each know we have to work on, but for whatever reason we have been lazy and haven't gotten around to addressing it. He challenged us to finally do something about this nagging aspect of our guitar playing that has been holding us back.

If we didn't know what thing was, we had the others to help us find it.

I think most people knew immediately what they needed to do. I know I have a list of things, so I better get busy making my list and figuring out specifics.

BR illustrated by telling us about an aspect of his drumming that has nagged at him for 20 years, and that he recently finally saw what it was and decided he would finally do something about it. He had talked to his colleagues in the world of professional drummers about it for years. It was apparently physically uncomfortable enough that it was destroying his enjoyment of drumming, even though as a professional he delivered and made it look and sound good.

Wow...

MB Goes Super Locrian

Later on, MB was gracious enough to hold a Super Locrian figure I've been playing around with, while I tried out a harmony part and a couple of bass lines.

It sounded surprisingly good. I've played these parts as overdubs in ProTools in an effort to see how they sounded together, and they never sounded satisfying like they did today in real time with another guitarist.

What's up with that? The notes are the notes, right? Shouldn't the mathematics of the notes and intervals, at least on some level, add up to the same thing?

Strange.

NST Classical?

Then TB rehearsed some of his NST classical guitar music in preparation for the upcoming CGT show, with the whole team as test audience.

Wow! Again!

I was surprised that he was playing in New Standard Tuning. I had always assumed gut or nylon strings wouldn't be able to hold the tension of the upward-tuned strings without snapping.

So much for assumptions.

Making the Breakthrough

In other areas, I'm pondering what it will take to break into the technical communication field, and I'll be consulting one of my professors. I experienced my break into book publishing as a tough slog, so I want to get it right this time.

Also, in the last few days, I finally admitted or understood that I felt (perhaps mortally) offended over something that happened months and months ago, before I got to Seattle. I've been experiencing a bit of resistance toward a specific task, and I couldn't seem to explain it. Now I know.

On some level, my attitude is, "Yeah, well, so what? Get over it, already. Do what you said you would do." I believe part of this situation involved an unspoken, unconsidered bit of presumption on my part, so it's not like I'm some kind wounded innocent.

But still, "it" resists and throws up roadblocks. What do I have to do to get this heedless, mule-stubborn animal I inhabit to cooperate?

I'm not very kind or forgiving toward "it" sometimes.

Anyway, now that I at least see it, maybe there is hope.

Coriander--Yuck!

Oh, yeah. I've decided I don't much care for the bitter taste of coriander when I make a curry. My bottle of curry powder already has coriander mixed in, so my recipes may be going overboard when they call for adding coriander. Or I'm not cooking it right and allowing it to mellow. Or I happened to get a bad, overly-bitter batch of it.

None of the curries I've had in Indian restaurants have tasted bitter like this.

As it is, it reminds me of nutmeg, and I don't really care for nutmeg most of the time.

Alright, I'm out of here.