Crawlin’, as Slow as Possible, in the Wind

This past Thursday evening, I had a guitar lesson with Bruno, the first in many weeks. I’ve been working on “Blowin’ in the Wind,” so Bruno suggested we play it together and set off at a rollicking tempo.

“Wait, wait,” I begged. “My tempo is 40.” (For a half note, but that's still pretty slow.)

“Does the metronome even go that low?” he asked incredulously, which made me laugh.

I enjoy playing the guitar once I get going, and the little snippets I’m writing are lovely, if I may say so myself, but the time I can spend on any given day is not very long, plus I keep missing days, or weeks, as my enthusiasm ebbs and flows.

For about ten years, I practiced the trumpet two and a half or three hours a day. People used to remark admiringly on my discipline, but the truth is that no discipline was required—it was an obsession and I wanted to do it every single one of those days.

The guitar, however, requires discipline, which is something I have very little of. But I haven’t given up completely because I believe that if I keep at it, it will prove to have been worthwhile.

Taking lessons has already really helped me in my composing. One thing I do, per Bruno, is have a “key of the week” (or “key of the two weeks” or “key of the month,” in my case) and find all instances of the first note of the scale on the lowest string of the guitar, then on the next string, and so forth, and then do the same with the second note of the scale, etc.

This has really helped me start to form a mental map of what had formerly been completely uncharted and seemingly incomprehensible terrain.

I was playing single notes the other day and it was reminding me very strongly of something: my childhood zither! From earliest memory, there were simple instruments around—a triangle, a drum, the zither—plus my mother’s piano. When I was three or four, I took a piano class at the YMCA, my mother’s doing, and eventually one kid or another in my family sang and/or played the piano, violin, cello, accordion, tenor saxophone, trumpet, guitar and bass guitar.

Thanks to those classes at the Y (that is, thanks to my mother), I never consciously had to learn to read music. It seems like something I always knew. I remember liking very much how the circles fit neatly between the lines, or bisected a line, and how some circles were solid and some weren’t. (I think I liked and like most of all a half-note that is between two lines.)

So I will keep at the guitar and, sick of being humiliated at lesson after lesson, I am going to focus my efforts on “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for now. I’ve written down all the possible chord transitions, and will practice those until I can switch a little faster.

Tom came over last night to watch the second-to-last Dark Angel DVD. (My very favorite episode was quite recently, the one with the mobsters and the woman who could bend people to her will just by looking into their eyes.)

Just before he arrived, I noticed a colossal spider near the top of the bathroom window. He seemed to wish to descend, but was having problems, and then he fell. I figured he’d landed on one of the towels below—he wasn’t on the floor—but when I looked up, there he still was: he was such a huge spider, he’d actually kicked some substantial piece of debris off the top of the window frame.

When Tom arrived, I told him, “We have a nature situation in the bathroom.”

Tom admired the spider’s ample proportions and asked, “Are you going to put him outside?”

“Actually, I was thinking that would be a satisfying project for you.”

I got the plastic container and sturdy piece of cardboard I use for these operations, and set up the ladder in the bathroom, and in no time, the spider was in the backyard.

I would actually have done this myself if Tom hadn’t been due for a visit—certainly I would done it rather than have to wonder when I’d wake up with the spider in my bed—but one instance of spider removal seemed like a fair trade for three quality hours of Dark Angel.

For approximately the past year, I’ve meant to go buy a new pair of running shoes (what in my youth we generically called “tennis shoes,” though probably none of them were actually tennis shoes; I still think of them as such). My current pair are partly mesh, which became filthy very early on, and in general, these shoes are absolutely dreadful looking, and I wear them every day, including to work.

I know they need to be replaced, but I can’t bring myself to do this chore. I meant to do it today, for what seems like the millionth time. I know exactly where I’d go—On the Run, in the Inner Sunset—and the whole thing would take probably two hours, not a big deal, but I just can’t do it.

I got up today at 11:45 a.m. and was still sleepy—yay—and as I reset the alarm to 12:45 p.m., I happily thought, “Well, no shoe shopping today, I guess!”

The next three weekends are spoken for, so shoe shopping is safely deferred until October 18, at least, and so it goes. This is exactly how “get a shade for the lamp by the bed” has come to be on my to-do list for 15 years or so.

My mother was lately suggesting I do something or other. I told her I absolutely was not going to do it, because if it were the kind of thing I could actually get done, I would also have bought a lamp shade long ago. “Ah, well, I guess you are your parents’ child,” she said, not without satisfaction.

This also marks a year since I promised David and Lisa I would send them a recording of a piano composition of mine. It’s on a cassette tape. I need it to be in the Mac so I can make an mp3. One of these years I’ll figure out how to do this (and then actually do it).