Ask Not Why
Tuesday. Well, here we are everyone: it's eight in the morning, breakfast and the papers have been consumed, the day is overcast and, I suspect, I'm feeling reasonably coherent and alive. These are all good things. I like to list good things in the morning, give an old - hup! hup! - start to the day, get my act in gear. Oh, dear. All of the attitudes I avoided as a youngster. I'll be getting into “cute” before this is over (the life as opposed to the entry) and have come full circle. Isn't there something about that in the commonly shared pool of myths and stories? You become like your parents toward the end like some weird manifestation of a snake eating its tail? But I digress. At eight in the morning.
Later. A bus ride downtown, a brief walk after sitting at a table eating a bun of some kind in the City Center, a short walk then before a bus back to the apartment. More a trip out of habit than any need to be outside, although the overcast air seems to have had a positive effect. Some practice on the guitar, I think, and then a session with the Seagull screed. Got to get into that Seagull screed or it will never happen or, worse yet, it will happen but not be up to snuff, not be as good as it should. My, my, it's only Tuesday and the week is beginning to look crowded.
Later still. The beginning guitar lesson book I'm using does start you with simple tunes. Very simple tunes that require some minimal dexterity with the left hand in fingering the frets. And so that's the routine: play the notes backward and forward (well, they don't suggest backward, but I'm sure backwards is just as good for practice) until it begins to sound like a tune. A song. Something the ear recognizes.
So that's what I've been doing. Six notes at the moment apart from the scales. Simple, right? First and second fingers (the third finger to follow), play the tune. Nothing too complicated. So good. I seem to be able to sit down for up to say twenty or thirty minutes, put the guitar down, do something else, come back and play for another twenty or thirty minutes. If I can do that, say, three times a day, I'm sure I can make progress. I just made that up, but I'm going with it. An hour or more a day will allow me to play Layla in another twenty years. We've launched a career!
Stop! If you're so damned happy with this guitar practice, why all this hup! hup! hup!??
I know, I know. Maybe I'm regretting buying a guitar before the required three months were up. Buyer's remorse. Comes with the package.
I bought a ticket over the wire to the Eric Clapton Crossroads 2010 theater broadcast for later this evening. Why, I'm not sure. It popped up on Facebook and led me to the ticket buying section, a local Emeryville theater hosting it nearby. So I'm going. Another way to get out of the apartment? Perhaps I'm getting desperate. Perhaps I'm mellowing out.
Perhaps you're avoiding something by spending all your time writing this.
Boredom? Am I avoiding boredom? I suspect I'm doing it because I like it. Ask not where it's going. Ask not why.
Late afternoon. For some reason I walked down to the theater and saw The Sorcerer's Apprentice forgetting, I guess, I have the Clapton concert to see at another theater not that much later this evening. Remember my comment on cute? The movie skates along the edge of “cute”, which makes sense as it's a Disney coproduction, but although I sat through the whole thing be ready for nerdy high school, college coming of age humor running in parallel with a Swords and Sorcery flick. Designed for a much younger audience. It was OK, even for me, but it was very close to not being OK for the icky-cute quality. If that makes sense.
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