A Boiled Down Life

...were there to ever be

a master race of humans...

The overarching problem seems to have been the pot that I had been smoking pretty regularly in the recent past and the deception that I fell under in thinking that I had perhaps built up a tolerance to it; or that, at the very least it wasn't effecting me the way it used to when I was younger.

After having not smoked any the past ten days or so, I am noticing a boost in areas such as self confidence and the ability to gauge the passing of time in a better perspective.

It seemed like it wasn't doing very much to me, and I would smoke out of boredom, or habit and at times such as right before donning my headphones in preparation of recording a musical part.

It took the absence of it in my system for an apparently requisite amount of time, something as I perceived as similar to a cloudy sky clearing to allow sunlight to shine through, for me to realize just how dopey and ill organized my whole life had become.

Just quitting the stuff was one small action that has had a global effect on my whole perception of existence.

Sun Worship Better Than None

Another small addition to my daily routine has been to go sit on the steps to the parking lot in the direct sun for 5 or 10 minutes upon waking up in the middle of the day.

I still wake up around 1:30 p.m. on a typical day, which is when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, but it never dawned upon me, excuse the pun, to go outside and absorb some of it; every day. There hasn't been a cloudy day since I started doing this, until today.

I return to the apartment feeling a certain glow. I am pretty sure this phenomenon contributed greatly to the boon of health and vibrancy that was a constant through my years of being homeless and waking each morning with sunlight hitting the fabric of whatever tent I slept in, or reflecting off the water of the river.

The clearing of a certain mental fogginess and the absorption of the rays of sunlight have gone hand in hand.

Take It From Pat

Another thing that has paid off is that I have learned to memorize the Mel Bay pieces that I am studying, so that I can look at the neck of the guitar, if anything, and not the sheet music that is in front of me, while I play.

This minor adjustment has drastically sped up the learning process.

I'm still practicing the law of attraction, and the ideas for this and several other details have seemed to have been right in front of me the whole time, yet hidden in plain sight.

It was an almost two hour interview of Pat Metheny on Rick Beato's Youtube channel that inspired this new way of approaching the Mel Bay pieces.

I am still planning to start a new channel aimed at novice guitar students. A "return to fundamentals" channel. Maybe if I give my originals titles like "Those Awful Fossil Fuels" then that channel will not be shadow banned.

I had always strongly suspected that the path to mastery of any piece of music was through the memorization of it, so as the cut out the extra step of translating from the notes on the page through the brain and to the fingers. Like circumventing the middle man.

Pat Metheny is arguably a very accomplished guitarist, even if you don't like jazz. He said that when he is practicing a piece he goes through it in all 12 keys. That is borderline obsessive compulsive, or whatever the term would be for someone who obsesses compulsively on every little detail.

Pat admitted that in the video; and he also went out of his way to point out that he has never drank, nor smoked pot his whole life. He said that he has been around plenty of people who do, and that he has watched them gradually run out of steam as the evening wore on. Not he.

But, seeing that made me look in the mirror and ask myself; have you ever played any piece of music in all 12 keys, or memorized the ones in the Mel Bay books so you could play them without looking at the sheet music? 

I know Tanya Huang the violinist can play anything that she can play in all 12 keys by transposing in her head.

So, right now, I begin my second day of sobriety; and have made sure that I ran out of money in order to keep myself in check.

I am going to give busking a fair chance but will be ready to grab a job at the Winn-Dixie, should I feel that I'm not on a mission from God as a busker.

There had always been a certain magic about the profession and things had fallen into place in the past; and that is because I had been practicing the law of attraction without realizing it. Always expecting good things to come my way, as if I were on the "right path" in life.

I won't be able to drink and expect to busk for reasons well documented in this blog. The busker needs any little edge he can acquire while out there; and being sober while playing for an audience of drunks has invariably tipped the scales in my favor. Many a cross-eyed person has dropped a big tip in my basket while slurring "You're awesome, man" in the past. A busker is like a designated driver with the same degree of responsibility if you want to look at it that way. The connection to the audience is not made by the hands of Man.

Even as it wasn't a conscious decision on my part to stop smoking weed, I just ran out of it and then kind of forgot about it. And when the student is ready the teacher (Pat Metheny) will appear.

I haven't slept in at least 24 hours; but probably wouldn't have, even if I had gone to bed and tried. The first few days of sobriety can bring about insomnia.

In Other News

David Lee Roth, formerly of the band Van Halen recently announced his retirement from performing. His last concert ever will be January 8th, 2022, I believe he said.

He espoused the belief that every time he went up on stage and gave it all he had, he was putting his life at risk, and/or shortening his life.

I disagree. I think people who live to be 100 are the ones who are still going strong well into their nineties. People who "retire" are sending the message to their brains and bodies that there is no longer work to be done and the state of atrophy sets in. There are only two states, that and entropy, with nothing in between. That's why doing just 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, or "aerobic" type is enough to keep most people in good shape.

Some nice Russians...

Other than that, I have been on a marathon of video watching, to include one featuring photos taken by a journalist who went along with the troops who invaded the beaches of Normandy, during "D-day."

He even threw in a couple good videos of the atomic bomb being tested in New Mexico for context, and added a very good narration to the montage around 1970.

The invasion was so secret that he said he didn't realize that he was accompanying the troops on anything more than a routine exercise until he noticed that they weren't turning around in the English Channel and heading back.

Really good stuff. with a lot of clips of civilians going about their happ-go-lucky business while the huge guns rocked the ground they were standing on. They still needed to tend their crops in the fields, type of thing. And the children were giggling and playing when not being dragged by the arm into bomb shelters by concerned mothers...