Art and Diversity

There are so many forms of music it boggles the imagination. Given that there are only eight notes; every combination has been played, every note sung - and yet.

You can be a virtuoso of your instrument...be it voice, guitar, bass or drums.
You can be a poet...a Dylan or a Mitchell - rare and far in between. She even more rare than Mr. Zimmerman.
She has a huge amount of physical talent in her voice that he sadly lacks. But poets are given that leeway. Look at Tom Waits.
You can be a painter of images on a aural canvas. Very fleeting and yet at the same time indelible.

As a kid I started with the blues. A boyfriend of a cousin of mine stayed at my house one summer for a weekend.
He took my archtop acoustic and played the blues. He showed me yoga and explained the meaning of life. His name was Phil.
So I listened to Clapton and Hendrix and encountered an artform that could set my soul on fire. But the blues lack serious lyrics.They are all incredibly similar - misfortunes seem to follow a pattern. So I began to look for meanings.

This led to things like Poco - uh oh...now I was straying afield. Lyrics mattered more than the music. What was the message? Did it evoke a picture? Was I looking at clouds in the shy...watching the shapes shift with the chords?

In 1972 or 1973, a friend of mine, Mike Buyukis exposed me to John McLaughlin. It was Mike that introduced me to Al DiMeola. And that led to years of love for all things Jazz. I found an entirely new world. And being young enough to be an enormous ass I also had a healthy disdain for anything less than Jazz.
Rock and Roll became...That stuff? My roots became passé. Mind you, no regrets.

So as I have grown and matured I have learned to love all my roots.
And I have seen my playing evolve in ways unimagined when I grabbed my first guitar at age eight.

Todays stage is back to simple. Pop.
I found that I am a literal poet. I compose sonnets, not songs. Or things ee cummings might like, but have no business set to music. And Dylan, I am not - even he understood what I had missed up until this point.
I can carve a wonderful line, but could never connect it in sequence to another that would trip lightly from the lips.

I had been contemplating a singer/songwriter that I enjoy when it struck me. I knew what a hook in Pop really is.
I understood - yeah the light from above, the whole nine yards...Angels may have been singing, too.

I had been trying too hard. Sculpting when whittling would work.
I was headed to a show last night and walking in the wrong direction. When I discovered my error and reversed course I began to hum. Three chords - and I have a wonderful line that has been literally rattling around my head for years. I put the two together and with purpose, told myself to construct a simple second line. No over reaching. I had it. I had it! In thirty seconds I had the companion line. Now, add another.

I watched the show that night, all the while knowing I had unlocked something fundamental to the creative process. The show reinforced that notion, no end.I am no master, but given time and some polish...I can do this.
All night, as I awoke now and again, I heard the lyrics - I think it was maybe 4 am when I added the last line to the verse.

Learning new tricks is life's blood. It's good to feel the beat.