Friday, October 17, 2014

Commitment - A New Twist

In Guitar we have an aphorism - With commitment all the rules change.

I've experienced this on various levels and used this to motivate myself over the years.  Last night I had an interesting experience that was new to me.  I've been participating in The Field DC for the past month with seven sessions remaining. In the past The Field has been a very fruitful process for me and I usually set goals for myself.  This time I did not.  I just took an open view about the possibilities and having more time available than in the past did not want to limit myself.

Yesterday I  decided to write a goal for our next showing.  An idea or nugget arose while practicing Monday and continued to corral my attention on Tuesday past.  This idea is hard on my left hand as two notes must be held down for long periods of time as the other two dance around a bass line.  The stress of having my second and fourth fingers anchored builds rather quickly.  When the transition arrives to move those two finger from a fourth to a sixth on the fretboard arrives, I can not execute the move.  Thus I have looked at this separately.


Last night after writing my goal to show this piece on our next session, I then forwarded my intent to show to the facilitator.  Moving to my guitar I was then amazed as I visited this work in progress called Turning the Wheel.  My left hand had a relaxed presence that was dramatically different from the session before.  Still surprised at how my body is helping me to now honor this commitment.  Now if I can only find an ending to the piece.



Photo by Kevin Dooley.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

DaEno

I've been taking a course at our local Takoma Park Library on Modern Poetry.  We follow the outline and discussions on Coursera and I've been enjoying the mental stimulation.  A link was posted to a Dada poem generator which we were invited to play with.  A chose a paragraph from an interview with Brian Eno, and then decided to edit what was generated.

Somebody joins   move  both                                                completely.
 

Take two unstructured instruments -- start the person.
 

Two playing somebody is you I 


photo by Derrick Tyson