Here I Sit, No More!

Good lord... what a non-week.

I missed a post on Wednesday, not sure how that happened. Anyway, I pretty much have nothing to write. I feel like I should write. I need to write.

I should be at some stranger's house right now, but I ended up staying home from Regionals. The reasons for not going started mounting so I didn't go. Wednesday I completely lost my voice, I mean it dug a tunnel beneath the walls with a spoon and wasn't heard from again until yesterday evening. That was combined with an overall feeling of illness. Lesser reasons for staying home included not knowing the music, not really liking the director we were going to have, simply not wanting to go through the housing ordeal and spend so much time rehearsing again, and having to miss my guitar lesson as well as show up late to work on Saturday. So today and yesterday I simply slept in and goofed off. I'm not really feeling sick anymore, but I was going to be out of school today anyway and honestly... I just couldn't see the point in going in.

But this week has been overall pretty lame. I mean like I said, Sunday was amazing, but other than that, I made no new revelations, learned nothing, and spent most of my time doing diddly. Everyone has weeks like that, I think.

Tomorrow is guitar lesson and work. Sunday I meet with Khai.

The guitar is coming along, sort of. I haven't made as much progress as I wanted to this week. I can play three, maybe four chords automatically, the problem is it still takes me too long to find them, so I can't really play in time. The movements still feel awkward and unsure. Maybe this is all to be expected in your first week of playing, but I wanted to have the chords and changing between them down cold by tomorrow. I imagine the space between the progress I feel I should be making and the progress I actually am making is going to grow wider and wider as time goes on, probably because I simply expect too much out of myself, and also I have no standard to judge myself against. Is the rate I'm learning at normal?

My only real advantage in learning the guitar is the same with any instrument I might try to learn, which is that I have a pretty good idea of music, arranging, register, range, rhythm and sight-reading going in. I can focus solely on technique and getting the movements down, since basic musicianship is already innate. For instance, given the starting notes each string plays when open, I can pretty much figure out the fingering to any chord on my own. With just a little guitar theory and technique it won't be long until I'm making my own arrangements of songs (and my own songs, which I already do of course). The problem is always you don't know what you don't know, and I may be looking at a much steeper mountain to climb than I realize.

This next lesson will be very important. It's going to tell me a lot about myself as a guitar student and my teacher as a guitar teacher. Here's the progress I've made, now what's next? What can I do to help me improve beyond this point? I want to leave each week with a clear idea of how far I've come and what I'm supposed to be practicing. I have who knows how much to learn and only six months to learn it, I don't want there to be a single stagnant week where nothing is really accomplished.

I feel really stupid for not having started this whole process two years ago. It's not like I'd never wanted to learn the guitar until now. It's just now that I'm feeling motivated enough to do it.

Anyways, it's quite thankfully almost the last week in February, which means only March, then April, then May, and I'm out! of! here! Isn't it funny how regular and unchanging the passage of time is, yet certain periods of our life seem to stretch and shrink depending on how we spend them? The best times always pass the quickest, the worst stretch on for eternity. Not always, sometimes our best or most vivid memories make certain months seem a lot longer than others. But time is a very steady rhythm, a steady snare drum beat marching us towards our final destination. But the more time you spend thinking about that, the less time on earth you ultimately have for all the better, happier things.

I wanted to write about how all this week I felt like a big, unmoving blob in this chair, futilely picking away at those same damn chords every day, not going anywhere any which way. How I want to spend my time more wisely, spend less time doing nothing, make more music, feel less blah inside. This skipping of Regionals feels like a culmination of all of that. But I'm not going to write about it, I'm not going to dwell on it, because the more time I allot it, the longer it will take to move past it. This next week is going to bring new challenges and new opportunities and new songs, I'm going to grab them, hang on and not let go until I'm somewhere else besides right here.

So there.

I love Rachel. Oh, how I wish she were here. I can't be the only one who feels like he was born to be alone.

_Dr. M

Greatest. Weekend. EVER

I'll have to keep this post short, as I only have like an hour to write it. My computer's internet turns off at twelve, which used to be fine since before I'd just go downstairs and finish on my parent's computer. Only now they've placed the same restrictions on their computer, for some reason they're hell-bent on keeping me off the internet after 12:00 on weekdays.

Other than that, I've had a really really good weekend, as the title implies. Saturday I unexpectedly had my first guitar lesson. There were two other students and both his kids (at least one was, maybe the other was just a friend) in the room at the time, so it didn't feel much like a "private" lesson, and he didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know... but still, my first lesson! I get the impression he's not as "hands on" as some other teachers, there will still be a good amount of self-studying to be done, but I imagine he'll give me repertoire and technique to work on, and answer any questions I have. That's what music teachers do, isn't it? lol

I can't have a lesson this week, because I leave for Regionals on Thursday and won't be back until Saturday afternoon. So in two weeks I'd like to have mastered the basic chords he gave me and changing between them, maybe set them to a song or two. The guitar neck on my mom's guitar is a lot thicker than normal, which is part of why it feels so awkward to play, so I'll be looking to get my own sometime soon hopefully.

Later that day was work, then me and my brother saw Coraline. Great movie. In 3-D which was really a little unnecessary, but it didn't detract much from it. The artistry was amazing, I would love to see it again just for that. I mean, the story and characters were okay, but it was really a treat to look at and experience.

Sunday I went up and saw Rachel. We had an amazing day. Went to see the Rodin museum which was great, ate pizza, etc. It was seriously the best time I've had in a long time, and I can't wait to see her again, probably sometime next month for spring break.

Today I slept until four since the night prior I'd only had 2.5 hours of sleep, then the rest of the day I spent with the guitar.

So I'm feeling pretty great, though definitely not looking forward to returning to school and show and everythingUUUGG.

I've dropped my album. I'm not in the right frame of mind to make an album right now, I just don't have any good ideas, and I knew the rest of the songs were going to turn out like the first one, and I didn't want to waste my time.

Rachel was talking to me yesterday about how she feels like she's wasting her time in college. Her mother said, and she agrees, that some people think you go to college to grow up, but really all you're doing is prolonging your youth as long as you can. You go there to delay growing up. All she wants to do, the only thought she has for her future, is to raise a family. And college is keeping her from doing that. So I said why don't, maybe in another year, we get married. I mean, why not? People get married when they're eighteen. I don't know how we'd raise kids when we can barely support ourselves (if that turns out to be the case, which with us both in college seems pretty likely), but we wouldn't have to worry about that right away. She said let's see how this next year goes.

All this school year I've been thinking about how eager I am to get out of highschool and out on the road, being in a different city every month, playing shows in backwoods bars and getting into fights with drunk old people. It's a very appealing lifestyle to me. But in the end, it's probably not worth very much. The person I care about most wants to settle down and raise a family, and create more little persons I care about most. How much more fulfilling would that be than traveling and playing music for strangers? Damned if I know, the good thing is life will in all likelihood decide that for me. The way things usually go, I won't have any say in it at all.

Fortunately, all I have to worry about right at this moment is not flunking out of high school, not flunking out of college, and learning to play this guitar. It's kind of comforting in a way.

_Dr. M

The GEE-TAR

Yesterday I called Misty's dad about guitar lessons, he didn't have his cell phone on, but I left a message and hopefully he'll get back to me. If not I'll take with somebody at the community school where my dad teaches piano.

I find I'm swiftly falling in love with the guitar -specifically blues guitar. More specifically slide finger guitar, but normal playing is good too. I love the rhythm of it, and the rawness. Delta blues seems to be the best description of the kind I like -just one guy and his guitar and maybe a harmonica. I'd like to listen to a lot more of it, the older stuff back when they first started recording in the twenties and thirties, and learn a lot of the songs, and use that mainly to perform when I get to college. This is one of those times when I get a little tingly feeling that runs all the way through my finger tips as I think about it and type about it... that's a good thing. I'm very excited and can't wait to start learning.

I've never worked very hard at learning an instrument in my life. I've taken lessons of various kinds, thought I was interested but never stuck with it. I guess I'm the most advanced right now at singing, though that's a funny thing to try and define, but I do know a good bit of vocal technique. I've absorbed some piano, if you sit me down in front of a piece and give me a while eventually I'll be able to play it. Well, this time it's going to be different. I want to become a really good guitarist. Never in my life have I looked a goal that would take hard work and dedication to achieve and said, "I am going to do this", and then do it. But I'm going to do it this time. Hopefully it will be a turning point for me.

The only thing stopping me from starting right this second is that my mom's old guitar that I'm tinkering around on is killing my fingers, and even with that I still can't sound a chord without extraneous buzzing (grr). I've never been one to put up with physical pain unless I know I'm doing whatever it is correctly, and the pain is the proper amount. For instance, if anyone is experiencing pain while singing, they're not doing it right and should stop immediately or they could irrevocably damage their voice. I'm not worried about damaging my fingers, but I want to see if it's a problem with the guitar, or something. I know some pain can be expected, but this is just a little bit overboard, and I still can't get it to sound good to boot. So some instruction might be good before going any further.

Misty's dad is an unbelievable musician and can probably teach me anything. The guy I'd take with where my dad teaches focuses mainly on rock guitar, but rock has its roots in the blues, right? I'd like to start out on acoustic, but I'm sure any competent guitarist could teach both. Anyway, I'm getting excited, like genuinely excited, about music, and it hasn't happened for a couple of months, since the beginning of this school year really, and that makes it all the better. I'm not as excited about recording, but I'm going to force myself to start the new album tomorrow, and once I start I think I'll be happier about it.

I feel like making an instrumental record. Overall I think I've had too much reliance on my voice, and on the melody and lyrics, so I think I'd like to push myself out of my comfort zone and focus on instruments and arranging. It will probably be more on the avant garde techno side of things, which is always fun. We'll see how it all goes down.

Yesterday was another day of school show. Some more guys didn't show up. We don't have many to spare, it doesn't look promising. We'll see though. Worse comes to worse we'll just do a review, which might actually be more fun than doing Joseph anyway.

I stayed home from school today. My mother wasn't around to wake me up (she was sick), and my dad woke me up late (I don't know why my alarm is incapable of doing this), so I just didn't get up. I said I was sick, and I might as well have been seeing as I didn't eat a thing until five. I'm going to bed on time tonight, even though I've only been awake for like ten hours. I'm definitely not sleeping in tomorrow. Ah school. Why must I hate waking up for you so darn much? Why must you start so freaking early?

Anyways, I have a bowl of Raman waiting for me that needs my immediate attention. So that's all for tonight.

_Dr. M