Saturday, April 30, 2016

Music from the End Game

Prince played almost to the day he died and he set an example for any musico who ever swung an axe.  People wonder how he died but what possible difference can that make after he lived his as close to perfectly as anyone could ever dream.

My life has been rather less than perfect but wallowing in mistakes in the end game accomplishes nothing.  If you haven't at least tried to make things right by now then there's no point in saying anything, it won't be and shouldn't be believed.

In life, there's very little time to review successes but you will have time to review your mistakes and failures at endless length.  Life is funny that way.

(Ed:  yah, hilarious)

Yah, it's a bitch but that's how it plays.


To all appearance, my guitar playing has been an endless failure with illusory successes (i.e. adoring fans who disappear after the last chord).  Nevertheless, I don't regard it as one and the kind of tiresome stand-by always applies:  the only real failure is when you don't try.


These aren't lessons from my ol' Dad because neither he nor my ol' Mother really taught us a whole lot except through what we learned by watching them.  As far as I could tell, it worked the same for all the sibs, that life is really on-the-job training.

From that we rarely tried to teach each other anything and the primary maxim of all existence became one of FIGURE IT OUT.

All of us did in our various ways but there was no training of any kind for the things I did.  There was some training in three-day blasts from IBM wunderkind but that's a theory of education which doesn't do a whole hell of a lot.  The general thinking is if you blast the information hard and with great intensity then you will get the Deep Programming effect and it may not all be remembered on the surface but it will be in there somewhere.

Perhaps.  Even if nothing else, it was cool living out-of-town on an expense account for an extended stay.

There are scads of ways to find computer education now but it was rare at that time.  I knew how to write novice PL/1 code but that teaches you zero about how computers work.  Naturally, that meant go off to get a job keeping computers working.

It's always been figure it out, figure it out, and it went the same way with music.  There was only one lesson in the early days and I knew close to zero.  He was kind of a dick about it and I never went back.  Everything else came from Mel Bay chord books and listening to records.

There was more 'education' later but that was the figure it out kind in joining The Freezebirds.  This was the whole deal in working up a set list, working up the songs, getting it happening.

After Ophir, the synth player with the Prophet V, had gone to L.A. and later killed himself, I didn't play with any other group live for many, many years.  It's the same today as the thought of his name brings floods of memories back.  Here's one as Ophir often got so hungry and that was the situation when I came to visit one time.  I said, man, we need to go to McDonald's.  We got a sack filled with their regular hamburgers to take back to the Klemmer Mansion and, man, they sure did disappear.  It makes me laugh trying to remember how many there were ... a lot.

I miss you, bro, even after all this time.

(Ed:  so you do remember some nice things you did!)

Yah, some (larfs).


Death is in my face and it would be foolhardy to ignore the fact of it.  Spinning things doesn't gain anyone anything.  Describing symptoms gains nothing either but the vibe of it may mean something as perhaps you want to understand the terror of death.

There isn't any.

It sucks knowing I will die and I really don't want to do it but it's really not a consideration beyond that except deferring that point as long as possible.

There was some caginess about what went wrong recently and the situation was extreme pain in the upper part of my right lung.  You know I've been hurt bad so we don't need to define pain.  This was intolerable.

Since that situation was so localized within the lung, there isn't much to conclude beyond, well, it's started now.  From that thought, there's nothing else for it but endure because you decide, well, fuck it.  I didn't want to play anyway but if you're going to kick out you better have a damn good reason for it.  That may sound simplistic but it's easy to make up reasons for it at this stage and it's even easier to believe them.


Within two to three days, that pain had eased back to about what it is usually.  The usual seriously sucks and I'm sucking inhalers all day to maintain that but it's tolerable.  There is no explanation for what happened but this still isn't terror.  The only thought in my mind has been supernova pain.  If this continues then I can't.

That made the night of it and the following day a hell zone you don't ever want to know but if you're worrying about this part being scary then you can let that one go because it isn't; it just sucks.  Quiet desperation is the English way, you know (larfs).

(Ed:  you're not English and Scots isn't close to the same thing!)

Hey, hey, we're Monkees, we're just foolin' around.


(Ed:  you seriously quoted The Monkees?)

wtf, I'm dead anyway (larfs).


Another Brit quote which is a big one right about now is 'you've got to larf' and I have never been able to validate it's real.  It's attributed to a radio announcer for the BBC in London in WWII during the bombing.  Even with bombs exploding around him, he gave the show and is said to have started it with those words.


Philosophy doesn't waver either as hopefully it's been clear for some time here on the blog I believe some God sparked the Universe and made all this happen.  Based on that, what anyone says about God is true because no-one can say any more than any other who has the best connection to God.

My expectations from that belief are minimal so there's no risk of disappointment and there's no fear of what if it isn't real.  I'm not suggesting my approach to anyone, my only purpose is saying it works for me.


Being an educator is not something I sought to do and it's not something I'm seeking to do now but possibly it's helpful in terms of perspectives.  As far as any terror sweeping over you like the wraiths in a horror movie, forget about that one.  It's not going to come and you won't turn into a lump of quivering blubber.


- Dedicated to Doc for something he said

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