"ardencies"
As in, "ardencies and anxieties of youth," David Denby, the New Yorker of Feb 9 & 16, 2009, page 118.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Old friends
"...Jenny?"
"Oh my GOD!"
Think of the relationships and circumstances that yield this sort of exchange. It requires a dear friend, absent for a while, and seen by surprise where not expected.
Think of maybe running into someone at an airport that you knew in college but haven't seen for 15 years. Or someone you used to work with, at an industry conference where you hadn't even thought about them being there but once you see them it makes sense. Or a reunion - probably all reunions of big groups will have exchanges like this.
It's a particular kind of assured love that yields it, nothing less.
But then, you have to think, if that deep and timeless love is there, why are these people apart?
"Oh my GOD!"
Think of the relationships and circumstances that yield this sort of exchange. It requires a dear friend, absent for a while, and seen by surprise where not expected.
Think of maybe running into someone at an airport that you knew in college but haven't seen for 15 years. Or someone you used to work with, at an industry conference where you hadn't even thought about them being there but once you see them it makes sense. Or a reunion - probably all reunions of big groups will have exchanges like this.
It's a particular kind of assured love that yields it, nothing less.
But then, you have to think, if that deep and timeless love is there, why are these people apart?
Mid-winter blog topics
Catching up on a few "to blog" ideas I've jotted down recently.
Feeling with your fingers
At guitar lessons I'm learning some more difficult things, which require changing chord shapes with your left hand and travelling further up and down the neck, and require more complex picking patterns with the right hand on non-adjacent strings. And my teacher was telling me how you keep track without looking - for example if you are standing to play, with the guitar on a strap rather than resting in your lap in the easy chair where you watch TV, and looking out making eye contract with the crowd. You know, because I'll be doing this so soon, that I need to know the right technique.
And he was saying that when he plays, he pays attention to how it feels, attends to his fingers making contact with strings that he's not playing, staying aware of the parts of guitar that he's touching. And I said, "Yes, I think I've been playing with my brain, but I need to start doing it with my body."
I was trying to apply this mindset for the next week, while practicing and while going around in the world, but found it a little scary. I think sometimes it's easier to live in your mind, detached from the physical world that's right there touching you. But it sounds like a good idea to try to be more aware of it, and if it makes me a better guitar player, then it's the right way to go.
Double Vision
I have been going to a poetry group in town, not reading poems because I don't really write them, but reading blog entries, mostly, the ones that are the most poem-like, which usually turn out to be the ones about Wisconsin weather. Also, I recently had to buy my first pair of reading glasses, which happens to everyone eventually, but it's still new to me. So a few weeks ago I was there, reading some blog entries about the weather, standing at a podium, and had for the first time the experience of looking down through the glasses at the printed sheet, and then over top of the glasses out at the audience to connect with them. It was hard. When you speak you need to look up at folks (at the end of every sentence, is what I heard - if you do that smoothly enough they don't even know you're reading), and these glasses were a barrier. If I accidentally looked through them instead of over them the people were just an indistinct blur. I even wondered about keeping my hand on the glasses and then removing them when looking out at the crowd. I will have to experiment with this more.
Distracted
Also from going to the poetry group, I've been having again in my life the experience of not at all listening to the person who's speaking, because you are in your mind rehearsing the thing that you are about to say when it's your turn next.
Other times when one has this:
Feeling with your fingers
At guitar lessons I'm learning some more difficult things, which require changing chord shapes with your left hand and travelling further up and down the neck, and require more complex picking patterns with the right hand on non-adjacent strings. And my teacher was telling me how you keep track without looking - for example if you are standing to play, with the guitar on a strap rather than resting in your lap in the easy chair where you watch TV, and looking out making eye contract with the crowd. You know, because I'll be doing this so soon, that I need to know the right technique.
And he was saying that when he plays, he pays attention to how it feels, attends to his fingers making contact with strings that he's not playing, staying aware of the parts of guitar that he's touching. And I said, "Yes, I think I've been playing with my brain, but I need to start doing it with my body."
I was trying to apply this mindset for the next week, while practicing and while going around in the world, but found it a little scary. I think sometimes it's easier to live in your mind, detached from the physical world that's right there touching you. But it sounds like a good idea to try to be more aware of it, and if it makes me a better guitar player, then it's the right way to go.
Double Vision
I have been going to a poetry group in town, not reading poems because I don't really write them, but reading blog entries, mostly, the ones that are the most poem-like, which usually turn out to be the ones about Wisconsin weather. Also, I recently had to buy my first pair of reading glasses, which happens to everyone eventually, but it's still new to me. So a few weeks ago I was there, reading some blog entries about the weather, standing at a podium, and had for the first time the experience of looking down through the glasses at the printed sheet, and then over top of the glasses out at the audience to connect with them. It was hard. When you speak you need to look up at folks (at the end of every sentence, is what I heard - if you do that smoothly enough they don't even know you're reading), and these glasses were a barrier. If I accidentally looked through them instead of over them the people were just an indistinct blur. I even wondered about keeping my hand on the glasses and then removing them when looking out at the crowd. I will have to experiment with this more.
Distracted
Also from going to the poetry group, I've been having again in my life the experience of not at all listening to the person who's speaking, because you are in your mind rehearsing the thing that you are about to say when it's your turn next.
Other times when one has this:
- Speech meets in High School. Going second was the best, you'd just miss the first speaker, didn't have to dive right in before the room was warmed up, but it was close enough to the front of the line-up that the nerves wouldn't accumulate and go over the top.
- Meetings at work. Especially when a boss is going around the table and asking for updates from each person in turn. You spend your time going over and over the phrasing to make sure it's got just the right businessy words, the lead message right up front, a confident tone, not too rambly.
- In a fight, or when mad at somebody. When actually fighting, you are constructing your next move in the argument all the while the mad-ee is saying their angry part. Dangerous, because this is just when you should be listening the most. And when mad but not in the presence of the mad-ee, even in an unrelated conversation, your brain is writing arguments and rejoinders to the absent person, and you don't pay attention to the one right in front of you talking about something else.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Belated Valentine's poem
I would abjure my fundamental values for you, baby.
I would change my last name to yours.
I would stand in a church - a church! - in a white dress,
Make promises concerning a future that is not actual,
Combine book collections,
Combine bank accounts,
pick up socks off the floor and do dishes by hand every day,
all for you.
For you, I would become part of your family,
go to your mother's house for Sunday dinner,
for roast and baked potatoes.
I would stand in a kitchen, I would roast, I would bake,
me, with these fingers that only ever before touched
computer keys and telephone buttons.
I would roast a roast for you.
I would visit your mother each Sunday.
I would change my name to yours.
I would abnegate all former selves and their beliefs,
for you, baby.
I would change my last name to yours.
I would stand in a church - a church! - in a white dress,
Make promises concerning a future that is not actual,
Combine book collections,
Combine bank accounts,
pick up socks off the floor and do dishes by hand every day,
all for you.
For you, I would become part of your family,
go to your mother's house for Sunday dinner,
for roast and baked potatoes.
I would stand in a kitchen, I would roast, I would bake,
me, with these fingers that only ever before touched
computer keys and telephone buttons.
I would roast a roast for you.
I would visit your mother each Sunday.
I would change my name to yours.
I would abnegate all former selves and their beliefs,
for you, baby.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
No one right way
Both of the hobbies I've picked up since my move here are very flexible and encouraging of alternative techniques.
Knitting is like this. Since everyone learns to knit from their mother or grandmother, that's the right way, and everyone's is a little different. Some use a continental style and wind the yarn around their left hand, some "throw" like I do with their right, and in one class I took there was a lady from Mexico who did something different again, more like continental but sort of upside down. The thing is, however you get the string wrapped around the stick so it stays and makes cloth, that's the right way for you. Since it's a folk art, everyone is very much open to alternatives and sharing.
And I'm finding out that guitar is like this too. I had a crisis recently because I was working "Twist and Shout" which was on my list of "Open Chord Songs" as a CFG one. I was having trouble with the strumming pattern, mostly, so I went to YouTube and found the clip of the Beatles at Shea Stadium. But it was the left hand that caught me up - George was playing chords that were nothing I'd ever seen before, way up on the neck. What was he playing? And why had my teacher taught me the open chords?
I ended up posting to an online guitar forum and actually got some really helpful advice back. And then my teacher came back from vacation and I saw him today (see previous post) and he was able to explain it further - there aren't any right chords. What I learned from all these helpful more experienced guitarists is that it's the ratio between the chords that matters. ADE is the same as DAG because the distance between the notes on the scale is the same ratio. And then you can play A's and D's and what have you all over the guitar. And you can use different fingers to play them. And what I found out tonight is that you can even leave some strings out entirely, but it's still the same chord. What he said was that it's possible to find "open chord" tabs for every song out there. That might not be the way the original artist plays it on YouTube, but it follows the ratios in the same way. So, to practice open chord playing, which is where I am right now, I should look for those open chord versions in the online tab-o-sphere. And I should look for songs that include bar chords so I can get used to transitioning to them. And only then can I work on the rock chords that leave some the top and bottom strings out, and then I will have the option of playing Twist and Shout like George Harrison does on the Shea Stadium clip.
I have stunned respect for all guitar players now. When I played the cello in school, they just sat the notes in front of you and you played them. Guitarists have to understand chord theory and intervals and transposition and all sorts of theory stuff, just to understand the basic concept that there aren't "the" chords to Twist and Shout, there's technique, and ratios, and facts about how notes fit together, and then there is a universe of guitar players, and then there are a million different ways to do everything.
Knitting is like this. Since everyone learns to knit from their mother or grandmother, that's the right way, and everyone's is a little different. Some use a continental style and wind the yarn around their left hand, some "throw" like I do with their right, and in one class I took there was a lady from Mexico who did something different again, more like continental but sort of upside down. The thing is, however you get the string wrapped around the stick so it stays and makes cloth, that's the right way for you. Since it's a folk art, everyone is very much open to alternatives and sharing.
And I'm finding out that guitar is like this too. I had a crisis recently because I was working "Twist and Shout" which was on my list of "Open Chord Songs" as a CFG one. I was having trouble with the strumming pattern, mostly, so I went to YouTube and found the clip of the Beatles at Shea Stadium. But it was the left hand that caught me up - George was playing chords that were nothing I'd ever seen before, way up on the neck. What was he playing? And why had my teacher taught me the open chords?
I ended up posting to an online guitar forum and actually got some really helpful advice back. And then my teacher came back from vacation and I saw him today (see previous post) and he was able to explain it further - there aren't any right chords. What I learned from all these helpful more experienced guitarists is that it's the ratio between the chords that matters. ADE is the same as DAG because the distance between the notes on the scale is the same ratio. And then you can play A's and D's and what have you all over the guitar. And you can use different fingers to play them. And what I found out tonight is that you can even leave some strings out entirely, but it's still the same chord. What he said was that it's possible to find "open chord" tabs for every song out there. That might not be the way the original artist plays it on YouTube, but it follows the ratios in the same way. So, to practice open chord playing, which is where I am right now, I should look for those open chord versions in the online tab-o-sphere. And I should look for songs that include bar chords so I can get used to transitioning to them. And only then can I work on the rock chords that leave some the top and bottom strings out, and then I will have the option of playing Twist and Shout like George Harrison does on the Shea Stadium clip.
I have stunned respect for all guitar players now. When I played the cello in school, they just sat the notes in front of you and you played them. Guitarists have to understand chord theory and intervals and transposition and all sorts of theory stuff, just to understand the basic concept that there aren't "the" chords to Twist and Shout, there's technique, and ratios, and facts about how notes fit together, and then there is a universe of guitar players, and then there are a million different ways to do everything.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Doctor
I was tearing the address labels off a stack of magazines to put them in the recycling (I don't mind publishing all my inner thoughts and feelings out here on the internet for all the world to see, but I am concerned enough about identity theft that I don't like having things in the recycling bin with my name and address on them), and one of them is addressed to "Dr. Ellen _____"
That's my name, and back when it was new it was very important to me to always use my title. Coincidentally right when it was new I moved to Australia where titles are required for every address you give to anyone - bank account, setting up the phone, library card, everything. But now not only do I not really use it professionally, hardly anyone knows that I have it.
Seeing it there I could imagine an even more extreme experience, where I'd for example moved to some uncharted tropical isle and had been living very simply, very close to nature, with a group who had a culture very different from my own, learning their language, adapting to the rhythms and colors of that life. And the coming back, and having those experiences people describe like being alarmed at sharp corners in rooms inside buildings, and forgetting that you have to use money before you take things out of a shop, and feeling insecure from not being able to see the sky and the birds and the movement of sun and stars all the time, and all that. And my feeling today is a small version of the feeling that person would have when stumbling across an address label that had "Dr." on it.
Yeah, that was me, but so long ago it was like in a different world. Yeah, that's something I did, but I hardly remember it, the now is so different from what that past was like then.
That's my name, and back when it was new it was very important to me to always use my title. Coincidentally right when it was new I moved to Australia where titles are required for every address you give to anyone - bank account, setting up the phone, library card, everything. But now not only do I not really use it professionally, hardly anyone knows that I have it.
Seeing it there I could imagine an even more extreme experience, where I'd for example moved to some uncharted tropical isle and had been living very simply, very close to nature, with a group who had a culture very different from my own, learning their language, adapting to the rhythms and colors of that life. And the coming back, and having those experiences people describe like being alarmed at sharp corners in rooms inside buildings, and forgetting that you have to use money before you take things out of a shop, and feeling insecure from not being able to see the sky and the birds and the movement of sun and stars all the time, and all that. And my feeling today is a small version of the feeling that person would have when stumbling across an address label that had "Dr." on it.
Yeah, that was me, but so long ago it was like in a different world. Yeah, that's something I did, but I hardly remember it, the now is so different from what that past was like then.
Anthill
So, in keeping with the New Year's momentum to keep doing the next right thing, I am starting to deal with the boxes that the stereo's in. They have been sitting more or less in the kitchen since early February of last year.
The magnitude of the box problem has been stopping me from commencing this process (see myriad previous posts) but I could have guessed there was something else. I unwrapped a pile of speaker cables and extension cords, and they were dusty from sitting behind the stereo in various houses, and the extension cord was even a bit grimy. And that reminded me of the overall grime that would accumulate in houses with him. Everything in my house here is new (and when I look out the window the whole world is covered in pristine white) but with him every time we moved you'd uncover grime.
And then I found a cardboard package that had been for the dish-scrubber I got when I moved to my new house after it all fell apart. I kept the package so I'd know the brand for getting replacement sponges for the end of the thing. The package has the company address which is in St. Ives, NSW. The dish scrubby thing deteriorated enough that I threw it away rather than move it, but here is the package from when it was new. And that makes me miss New South Wales, and back when it was normal to see Australian addresses on things I bought.
I have the iPod on Shuffle which is perhaps dangerous because there are so many of his albums ripped onto it, but so far nothing too heart-stabbing. The first song up was Mike Ness, "Rest of Our Lives", which has some stuff about loneliness and being apart from one's love, but it's also a straight ahead American traditionalist rockabilly tune, and that's been my obsession all weekend reading all the guitar stuff and working out what direction I want to go in (I keep stumbling across that nexus of country, blues and punk - a Scotty Moore article in Guitarist, an interview with Billy Zoom, the Wikipedia entry on Social Distortion). So that song represents both past and future.
And I found the Magnetic Poetry Kits, remember those? The feature of every hip college student's fridge, a few years back? I opened up the box and just pulled out the first words that caught my eye, and now my fridge says:
blind from yesterday crap
I'll change it once I make a bit more progress, to something more hopeful.
The magnitude of the box problem has been stopping me from commencing this process (see myriad previous posts) but I could have guessed there was something else. I unwrapped a pile of speaker cables and extension cords, and they were dusty from sitting behind the stereo in various houses, and the extension cord was even a bit grimy. And that reminded me of the overall grime that would accumulate in houses with him. Everything in my house here is new (and when I look out the window the whole world is covered in pristine white) but with him every time we moved you'd uncover grime.
And then I found a cardboard package that had been for the dish-scrubber I got when I moved to my new house after it all fell apart. I kept the package so I'd know the brand for getting replacement sponges for the end of the thing. The package has the company address which is in St. Ives, NSW. The dish scrubby thing deteriorated enough that I threw it away rather than move it, but here is the package from when it was new. And that makes me miss New South Wales, and back when it was normal to see Australian addresses on things I bought.
I have the iPod on Shuffle which is perhaps dangerous because there are so many of his albums ripped onto it, but so far nothing too heart-stabbing. The first song up was Mike Ness, "Rest of Our Lives", which has some stuff about loneliness and being apart from one's love, but it's also a straight ahead American traditionalist rockabilly tune, and that's been my obsession all weekend reading all the guitar stuff and working out what direction I want to go in (I keep stumbling across that nexus of country, blues and punk - a Scotty Moore article in Guitarist, an interview with Billy Zoom, the Wikipedia entry on Social Distortion). So that song represents both past and future.
And I found the Magnetic Poetry Kits, remember those? The feature of every hip college student's fridge, a few years back? I opened up the box and just pulled out the first words that caught my eye, and now my fridge says:
blind from yesterday crap
I'll change it once I make a bit more progress, to something more hopeful.
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