Find your day tripper

Finding Your day tripper

so this is the final installment in my  explanation of what music is for me...  Like many things in life the explanation of it is not even close to the experience you know just like pornography is nothing like.great love-making.  However, having said that here goes the “final” part.  Also Pandemic  Journal  Entry Two—Will be coming later today in gathering form of a bonus  blog and podcast.

It was October 2005 and I was sitting in one of the few formal guitar lessons that I took.  The instructor asked me “what songs do you know from the first note they are played on the radio”. I said I know a million songs from the first couple of notes.  “Favorite group?” He asked.  Then he didn’t wait for an answer and said “you have to  be a Lennon guy so let’s  start there like with the Beatles—the next song you learn will be a Beatles song.”  He nodded and I nodded and he says hit the open low E string and then the second fret and third like this... he plucked them out slowly on his acoustic and waited for me to do the same on my electric.  

I did it and then did it again and a third time and then took a deep breath and smiled.  “You are going to be a guitar player!” Was all he said.,  Let’s learn the rest of that  riff.  By the title of this.you know  what this song was and for me it will always be the song that I first played and knew exactly how  it felt the first time it was played by the Beatles and somehow I knew what it had felt like the first time, not for me, but the3 very first time the magic came from that combination of tones and silences.  Immediately I knew the spot in my soul and spirit  where that came from and  that feeling of being one with an art.  From that point forward in life  I have made it a point to be aware of each time I felt that harmony between an activity and  my inner self.  It is like the line from “Field of dreams” that  says “when all the cosmic tumblers fall into place.”   What’s more i knew that the guitar and the music I could make with it would be the key to those tumblers for me going forward.  

Within a year and maybe less I started writing lyrics and songs that helped me process life’s experiences and very often the songs helped me think and feel my way through things that. We’re blocking my sense of peace and joy.  Someone once asked how long I had been working on a particular song.  I shook  my head and said, “it’s not how long I have been working on it so much as how long it has been working on me.”  

So here’s where this allo comes to...

As  we all seek peace and joy it really pays (I think) to give attention to the moments when something comes naturally to you.  Create and appreciate the moments when your body does things without effort that create an emotion within you.  It doesn’t matter what that is...it could be knitting, cooking, balancing a ledger—it doesn’t matter.  When you  get that in the zone feeling run with it and never apologize for enjoying it.   It is one of the gifts the universe  has granted. To you and  most of the time you were meant to share it.  Beyond that encourage others to explore activities that  you see create a glow in someone else.  Support others as best you can as they pursue those things.  I am beyond grateful that music has revealed itself to me in this way and  thank you for. Listening to my songs and reading my lyrics.  

That’s about all I can say about this topic with the exception of this...If you get the chance—listen to The Load Out/Stay by Jackson Browne.  I spend a lot of my time feeling the way he seems to feel...sometimes when I’m playing the guitar, sometimes when I’m in the company of some of you, sometimes when I’m watching a fire, or staring at a river.  If the last few entries don’t make sense after that...let them go there will be something  better starting later in today’s “Pandemic Journal—Day Two

Until next time—“keep on rockin’ in the free world.