"I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive."
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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If the run described in my last entry could be considered one of my weaker efforts, the run yesterday up Spencer Mountain was one of my higher moments. I was relieved to find that my energy had risen dramatically, and I loped along the Amazon Trail with a yearning for the forest trails of Spencer. I love the laborious plodding up the mountain, passing trees which fill me with awe and wonder as I wend and bend my way up and up, carrying a cliff bar in my left hand, looking forward to sitting on the summit in solitude, eating and gazing upon the vast vistas which I am unaccustomed to seeing from on high. On the way down I passed a group of five hikers at a crossroads and it did not occur to me to check if I was going in the correct direction after I chose to turn right. Within a half mile I knew I was going down the trail which ended at Willamette Road, so I turned around but after a few steps up I had the impression that the hikers arrived at the crossroads at precisely the time I did so that I could discover this new trail, so I turned myself around and began running fast, gazing at new scenes and trees and when I got to Willamette I rode the shoulder and within a quarter mile passed a Welcome to Eugene pop. 157,00 sign and I ran that hilly pavement back to my normal stopping point, creating a perfectly tuned loop - flats, roads, switchbacks up and down the mountain - I knew I had a new route which I will be running again and again.
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I bought a paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ten days ago at Tsunami Books (along with books by William James, Emily Dickinson, HD Thoreau, Cesar Vallejo, and Thomas Moore, all books found in the dollar bin!). It was a book which I heard about during my first year at NIU. I was night walking with a guy I met at a philosophy club meeting and he told me it was his favorite book. I soon found a copy at the library but after reading the first page put it down, knowing the time was not right for such a book (I read no literature/novels during my 3 years at NIU - I was chasing the cornerstones of truth and decided that nonfiction was the first step in this long path of curious discovery). I never forgot the book, likely because of the Zen word, as I have no interest in motorcycles or maintenance. Twenty years later I begin to read it, and yes, the time is right, words resonating, the experience gained with twenty years of risk taking leading to a clearer sight of the author's vision. Today as I lounged in the backyard, bathed in the blue afternoon shade of an ornamental tree, I began to read chapter 10 and understood that the first life altering decision I mentioned in my last entry mirrored what happened to Phaedrus as he quit science and went in a different direction - "Phaedrus didn't understand this, but after arriving in Seattle, and his discharge from the army, he sat in his hotel room for two whole weeks, eating enormous Washington apples, and thinking, and eating more apples, and thinking some more, and then as a result of all these fragments, and thinking, returned to the University to study philosophy".
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I blew my amp out the first time I plugged in upon returning from Portland. I quickly placed a wanted ad in CL and a typical Eugene character (unkempt hair, disheveled clothing, hip dialect with a scent mixture of 420 and alcohol lingering in his wake) rides his bike 40 minutes carrying the amp under his arm to deliver it to me. While he stated in his email the amp was brand new, when he arrived the "chan vol" knob was missing, and one of the FX knobs was broken. Even with the defects I decided to buy the amp for $65 ($110 new) since the sounds it produced was good enough for practice, and I did not have the heart to send him off on his bike carrying the amp under his arm.
I have been doing guitar work for 2 years and 9 months, this blog being created to document the learning process of something completely foreign. Having no apparent musical talent or skill, I was curious to find out if practice and desire were enough to overcome complete ignorance. At my current level of learning I surely cannot play in public, but the progress I have made from day 1 through today has surpassed my expectations. Every time I sit down to practice I take a few steps down the road of music, and what else is to be hoped for? My memorization of the pentatonic scale has become stronger, and with the main obstacle no longer being able to find correct notes, I notice that speed and note inflection is completely lacking. So this past week the time had arrived for me to use a metronome to work on speed of musical passages. I have known from early on that a metronome is considered an important tool, but I was reluctant to use it because how can a metronome help with memorization of a scale, or getting the fingers strong enough to stretch and remain relaxed? Now that I have decided to focus on speed, the metronome becomes the natural tool, and as I used it for the first time this week I found myself thoroughly enjoying its presence because it makes it easier to play a short passage over and over without losing time or interest.
Along with speed, the inflection of the notes - vibrato and bending - is something I am also focused on. While the wrist turning style of vibrato does not come easy, and almost seems wrong, I am determined to learn it because I see in videos of the blues greats that they all have exceptionally fast wrist turning technique. I recently discovered that one of the problems is that my wrist is not accustomed to turning with speed, so I know I have to work with turning it back and forth for long periods of time.
I believe that I do indeed have the potential to be a good blues player, but only with a lot of continued practice and dedication. The main reason for my confidence has little to do with the physical aspects of guitar playing, but rather my innate feel for the blues - it is a language which is engraved into my spirit, and I yearn to set it free - isn't that the reason any good and honest thing is created?
