Robert Fripp long ago observed that music calls upon the unlikely to make itself heard, and this sentiment seems truer every day, in a society that so often seems committed to finishing off what’s left of an already much-hobbled creative impulse.
I am one of those for whom the creative impulse is a critical metaphysical bulwark, against the usual vagaries of life in a society in late-stage decline, and against the additional social and personal challenges that tend to arise even over that aggravating bar. I figured this out long enough ago, about myself, to realize that if ever I start to see my own creative interests actually dull or decline, that represents a really serious problem for me that I need to sort out before it’s too late.
And I’m dismayed to observe that it has.
Against the obvious logic of our collective schedule, my family has encouraged me to take the time for a local weekly community music jam, that this might prove helpful in rekindling some of what needs rekindling.
And it has, although not perhaps in the way I’d first thought it might.
I can sense, clearly enough, that I do benefit in the expected sense. For starters, it’s actually an adult activity for me. Also, I get to learn–re-learn–my instruments, after embarrassingly long periods of non-use. And the audience is kind and gracious enough that they’ve even started to indulge a few nerdboi ideas of mine brought to the table. These are absolutely sustaining things, and worth the effort on their own. I’m grateful to have them.
But I also realize that I am ultimately out of place in this group. The overlap in shared experience is almost nil, really, enough so that I find it difficult even to try and explain it without sounding like some impenetrable mystic. I struggle, clearly, with what must seem the most basic things, like reading lyric songbook charts, knowledge of common popular songs, and even keeping up with the ideas I myself bring to the room! (Part of that latter is certainly just the need for woodshed chops, but it’s not just that; it’s also managing the terrors of knowing full well I’m in a setting which is foreign and new to me (among others who all seem to know the drill), and not knowing how to communicate my contributions to what might be a different set of people and instruments and interests, any given week. I do recognize the potential growth opportunity there, and that is how I’m trying to approach it, but that doesn’t allay the terrors.)
In casting about for ideas that I might contribute to this group, I didn’t seem to be making much headway (in the precious little time I have to prepare) with what I first thought would be appropriate bits; either I’d need too much prep time that I didn’t have, or I didn’t find myself truly invested in the source material. And through it all I was continually frustrated that I needed a lot of woodshed time to get some general skills back in my hands. When I finally got a window to dedicate to that task, I of course went back to what I do know: Guitar Craft exercises and general skill builders.
It must have been that, which then caused me to dig up some of the Guitar Craft repertoire. Initially I just thought I might try and reapproach some of it to help build my own general skill back, and maybe restore some confidence. Perhaps I should have anticipated this, but I wasn’t expecting that Guitar Craft as “a way of doing things” would necessarily reassert itself in my life aside from the weekly jam group…
But there it is, and now it occurs to me that the reason it has appeared there, at this moment, is that GC itself is the “unlikely” that I desperately need. I can sense this repertoire starting to pull at me, insistently, making me an offer…
Unlikely, yes. (Not least among the difficulties, is that I don’t know anyone else, here, to play any of this with.) But “unlikely” is baked in to the phenomenon, isn’t it?
So, then: “Begin again” just got a little bit more literal, for me. I’ve started to re-approach “Bicycling to Afghanistan”, and have even started to approach “Driving Force” for the first time. And others will follow, I know it. :-)
Craftygrass 