Beautiful music
Saturday October 4, 2003 – 5:32 amTonight John and I sat down and played guitars. We’ve been going out five years and I don’t think we’ve ever done that before! I just kept calling out tunes and he’d follow along, we did ten or fifteen of ‘em. It was a lot of fun, we’ll have to do it again real soon. I need the practice, for my voice and my hands too. My left hand gets really shaky trying to hold the chords down. I’d be worried about arthritis except that it’s always been that way when I haven’t been practicing. Really I just need a better guitar! My red guitar’s pretty hard to play, and some chords are literally impossible to play due to the worn-out frets. Maybe soon I’ll be able to get a new guitar… my grandparents sold their house and are giving me and Lucie some money, just because they want to. Maybe a new guitar is in order… one that I can play without pain, and a new amplifier that won’t literally blow up onstage like my cheapo Peavey’s done, not once, not twice but three times!!! And a new pair of shoes, that’s the ticket. :-)
Every night for the past week, me and John have been watching that 7-part series of specials on blues music that Scorcese did for PBS. We’re getting it on TiVo. I can’t get enough of it, it gives me the chills and makes me cry and makes me want to play all day long every day. In a way I feel like, as a white girl, I’ll never really truly get it… it’s not really my music is it? Unless you were there, unless you lived it you’ll never really understand. But in another way I feel like it’s just as much a part of my soul as any other music, maybe more. This is going to sound stupid but… I really wish there’d been no slavery back then. I feel bad that my ancestors acted that way, I wish white people hadn’t ever treated black people so badly. I wish all that had never happened, it makes me want to cry. Lord have mercy. Such beautiful music, beautiful people. I wish we’d all grown up together not knowing what it’s like to consider somebody else as any better or worse than ourselves. It’s just so fucked up!!!!!!!
October 4th, 2003 at 9:21 am
I feel stupid for having posted this. You can’t just "feel bad" for atrocities committed by your ancestors. It’s not enough and there’s nothing you can do to ever make up for what they did. Blame them for leaving you to feel the guilt they should have felt themselves!! Ugh. I have German ancestry too but thankfully they all got out of there and went to Texas way before there was any such thing as Nazis!!
October 5th, 2003 at 2:01 am
That’s a nice, thoughtful post. Don’t feel stupid.
What kind of guitar do you have? What’s your dream guitar?
One line that has stuck with me from the first of the blues documentaries was from Corey Harris. He said that the blues were not the Shakespearean canon, that some people, when they play old blues songs, will recreate them note-for-note, including solos, mistakes, and what were originally improvised verbal asides*. Harris said that people should instead make the songs their own, or write their own songs, that it’s supposed to be a living tradition and not an ossified sacred text. So I think Harris would say that you have as much of an ability to "get it" as anyone else. Of course, probably not everyone would agree with this sentiment.
(*Shakespeare’s plays are not really treated with this kind of reverence in performance, but I get what Harris was saying.)
October 5th, 2003 at 2:20 am
Thanks George. I know I know… if I’m going to get all upset about what *those* ancestors did, I might as well kill myself right now ‘cuz people have been treating each other like shit since the beginning of time, right? I guess it just hit me hard yesterday, seeing all that footage and realizing how much I love the music and how much they mean to me, the people who made it and are still making it. It made me feel so bad I got very emotional about it. I sure wouldn’t want to live in a world without the blues.
So anyway… I have two guitars of my own. One is a Stratocaster in Lake Placid blue and the other one is a bright red Washburn acoustic. The Washburn is beautiful to look at, but sounds tinny and is pretty hard to play. The Strat also looks great but is not exactly suited to my style of playing — it is very easy to play though, and very suitable for touring and getting knocked around. I need something that’s more "me" soundwise but that’ll be a good workhorse for touring purposes. I need a new amp to go with it too, but that’s easy, I’ll probably just get a Fender Twin or something.