Patchwork post

I mention in an email to D.E. that I'm planning to visit soon and he asks if I will be bringing my guitar. Is it possible that there may be someone out there who might actually want to play with me!?! Lordy!


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Intense guitar work at Trinity on Saturday. Alternately invigorating and frustrating. Fortunately, the frustration never dominated. At times, confusion did dominate.

I seem unable to retain – in body memory or mental memory – the patterns in this work. We worked on three successive phrases, and then we returned to the first, and it was already gone. Completely. Five measly notes - gone in about 30 minutes despite many, many repetitions.

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Saturday evening I spent more than an hour and a half with the metronome, separately working on the right and left hand of the B.R. exercise. Finally managed successive executions of the exercise with the metronome. This exercise employs the 2nd through 5th strings, so after recognizing my difficulty this morning with the 1st and 2nd strings, I move the exercise over to the 1st thru 4th strings. It was like moving to another continent.

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I do not know how to use my hands. Morning guitar practice today in the new continent was a little more within reach. Still, I don’t know how to use my hands. It astonishes how often I repeat the same mistake. Not only that - an immediate effort to attempt the note still results in the same mistake – somehow the needed adjustment isn’t made. Of course, the reality is that I don’t understand how it works when I play ‘properly’ either. I am reminded of something the physicist David Bolhm said at a talk I attended some 30 years ago. He spoke of how awkward he was as a child, how once he approached a stream wanting to get across. He recognized he would not get across, making every step from stone to stone, by thinking about each movement that was required. He simply needed to move. It seems something similar is needed – yet, at the same time, accurate and precise relaxed adherence to the pattern. I don’t know how it is achieved. And the manner in which I work/practice doesn’t seem to be bringing me any closer.

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Went to see a house for rent in Ballard today. I’d called on it earlier in the day and the landlord said he already had enough appointments, but he’d take my name & number. A little later as I readied to go to the café, I decided to drop by and check the place out from the outside at least. He was out in front with one of his appointments when I came by. I stood by until he was done and then introduced myself, acknowledged I was there without an appointment, but asked if I could see the place anyway. He said sure. Nice, though small place. A bonus, is that it has a basement which I could use. The kitchen is the largest room in the place, which would make it the center of the home. It is just a stone’s throw from the Ballard Market and perhaps a generous mile from Trinity. The landlord acknowledged that the place gets hot in the summer. I believe him because it has several large south-facing windows. It has garden space all over the south side of the property. In other words, it has plusses and minuses. The landlord said that he got a good feeling from me and would give me the place, but wanted to honor that others were in front of me in the queue. Where would I put the behemoth?

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While looking for something else today, I found this.

"It's love," they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half. -William Stafford