Housebound With Harold

I opened the door to let Harold the cat out, Thursday night. It was probably about 45 degrees and raining lightly.

He paused at the sight and feel of it; looked at me and meowed, as if begging me for a warm evening with no precipitation.
Luckily, I have taught Harold enough of the English language, so that "It's raining outside, Harold" rung a bell with him. This is a phrase that I repeat to him at such times as when after I have looked out my window to notice that it has started to pour down rain, and have gone to the back door, where a quick rattle of my keys had produced him, darting from under one of the cars in the parking lot, making a beeline for the doorway that I was holding open.

I will usually add the phrase "You don't like it," which he is familiar with pursuant to food matters.
Sometimes he will meow, apparently wanting something that I might be eating that I am pretty certain he won't like. I will still put a bit of it on his plate, with the words: "You don't like it, Harold," something he is learning the meaning of, through morsels of eggplant, or some food seasoned with a lot of onions and/or garlic.

"It's raining outside, Harold, you don't like it..."

After he meowed, asking me for better weather, I said: "That's all there is, Harold..." -another culinary phrase- and, after he stood there a few seconds, watching the rain and feeling the cold, long enough for him to have forgotten whether he was coming in or going out, he came back inside, where I eventually had to tell him: "That's all there is," because I had done the same thing as him; going outside, ostensibly on my way to the store, where I would get wet cat food, and then changing my mind after standing in the cold and watching the rain for a moment. I would need gloves, I thought.
Housebound for the third day now, I have put a lot of time into studying the GIMP photo editor, recording music, messing around with the "swing" settings on the rhythm track generator, and wondering how people who are prolific in their outputs of work, manage to be so.

They must either work smarter than I, or, more likely, don't smoke pot before putting their noses to the grindstone.

Who has time to watch Youtube "how to draw" video? Why, I guess I do...

Someone with 3 whole days to be shut in in his own private studio should produce more than I have, I feel. My place is becoming a gallery for my art, and a lot of the tracks that I'm recording will eventually find their way onto my CD.

The Disappearance Of Magical Thinking

The one thing that I am adamant about is that there is no more room for magical thinking, when it comes to my music. My goal is to make everything I do repeatable.

Gone are the days of trying to "capture the moment," "catch lightning in a bottle" and play something on the guitar that I "could never play again the same way." No more "winging it." No more leaving the tape recorder running because I might play something cool, and then would wish that I had been recording. Only when I can play through a piece 20 times without making a mistake will I hit the record button. That way, I'm not crossing my fingers and trying to make it to the end of a piece without screwing up, as if luck were somehow involved.

This has been a recurring theme in my life, now that I think of it.
Like, when I used to golf. I had a swing that required a bit of luck in order to hit the ball well. I would coil my back swing so far that I would lose sight of the ball, momentarily.
"Keep your eye on the ball," being the tried and true method for being able to repeatedly strike it; I would forego this, in order to gain the advantage that the extra coiling would give me. I weighed 135 pounds, and wanted to overcome this handicap. When I did connect with the ball, I would hit it further than any other 135 pound guy, who is stodgily sticking to the mechanics of "the proper" golf swing; but I wasn't consistent; I was hoping to get lucky, the same way the kid who closes his eyes and swings as hard as he can at the plate when playing baseball. "One of these days I'm going to connect, and that ball is going to wind up in the parking lot behind left field," that kid might think...

This had found its way into the music that I used to play.
I would put myself into situations where I would be trying to play something great that I had never played before. I'd clear my mind before going up on stage, purposely leaving everything up to spontaneity, inspiration, faith, magic and adrenaline, and, unfortunately, luck. Sure, I would feel great after having gone up and invented a song on the fly, amazed by the effect that adrenaline can have on a person who has put himself in a situation where he is actually feeling the fear of "Holy crap, I'm totally relying upon spontaneous improviswoation to get me through this; why the hell didn't I rehearse something; what if I can't think of anything once I get up there? I hate this feeling..." The only option, at that point, is to just get up there and do the best you can.."
I was fooling myself into thinking that I was channeling the spirit of Jerry Garcia or relying upon "the muse" to guide me, and basically hoping for something magical to happen.
It's OK to foster this element; but there is certainly plenty of room for all that; in addition to having a piece that you ran through 28 times the night before, until the last few were pretty much mistake free, rather than going up there planning upon pulling something out of your ass that is going to be a delightful surprise for both yourself and the audience.
The Great Music Spirit helps those that help themselves...
So, now I'm practicing 20 to 30 minutes here and there of just playing the same measure repeatedly, even though I might fancy that I have gotten it learned during the 7th minute of repeating it. It isn't right until I can daydream while my fingers move automatically over the fingerboard. 

To the right is my second attempt to draw this girl. It's better than the first one, in which she came out looking like a battered child from Appalachia, or somewhere where they lock kids in closets for weeks at a time...

Set Me In Motion!

So, my "fear" is that I am going to look back at this period of my life, and be remiss over how much I could have, should have, would have gotten done. I've got to get into the abandoned rectory so I can brainstorm on

A lot of things start out slowly, before you get the hang of them, and then become more productive exponentially as you go along.
Certainly, discovering all of the techniques facilitated by the GIMP editor is an endeavor that could easily require one or two semesters at a community college to learn.

The Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method books; one year of study for each of them is not an unreasonable amount of time, I would say, to master them.

So, I practiced with a metronome last night, keeping an eye on the clock to ascertain that I was indeed playing the same few notes over and over for at least 15 or 20 minutes at a time. I can understand why people have concluded that "3 and a half hours of practice every single day" will bring about progress on a musical instrument.

0 Dollar Week So Far

It is Friday evening. I will most likely not go out and busk, because it is about 45 degrees and raining lightly, off and on.

The 70 bucks that I made last weekend is keeping well inside the apartment.

There was a time when I would get myself out of that warm sleeping bag under the wharf and busk in such conditions, my only concern being that, for every degree that the temperature drops below 50 degrees, the likelihood of not being able to hang on to the guitar pick increases.

A guy once gave me money to "get inside some place warm" on such a night when it was probably about 38 degrees out, and I was playing the simplest 3 chord songs that I know, because those were the easiest ones to play with hypothermia. I went and bought some liquor and then got inside someplace warm, namely, my sleeping bag under the wharf...

Bobby has been calling me, as I sit here at the Uxi Duxi.
He leans towards discouraging me to do kratom. "You don't need that shit," said the guy who is on 100 milligrams of methadone per day.
He is in the process of buying a truck.
He is still going to give me an electric guitar and an amp for Christmas.
Now, it might be a Roland Micro Cube, rather than a Blackstar brand that he gets me.
He sees the potential for me to make money with such a setup.
If I could just start off by meeting Tanya on the corner of Royal and St. Louis and jamming with her for maybe an hour here and there to start off with, then yes, there is the potential to make money with such a setup...