Just Writing

 So here it is over a year without writing any lyrics to anything new.  The times are different and a lot of influential change continues.  Two of the strongest being the pandemic and an injured left index finger.  Both in their separate ways, have altered my interface with music.  The pandemic removed normal living from possibility, as a man of science.  I pay strong attention to the direction that informed opinion of professional medical science provides.  Thus as an older person, I remain quite vigilant as to the potential of exposure to the virus, which to me represents being alone much more than not and much more than in any other period of my life experience.  When I do go out to get supplies, which is nearly the only thing I will allow, I remain quite aware, mask up and keep my distance from others always.  That is in itself a challenge, but the larger portion of this issue is the prolonged isolation.  Just three months before the viral plague hit, the finger issue came along which came to a head on Christmas day of 2019, the last time I played a guitar for many many profound months.  This was a life changer because playing guitars has been a major part of my life and somewhat my personal driving force for decades. Being right-handed, the sudden inability to use that left index finger to press on a guitar string, took my music away, leaving me feeling quite lost.  Beside that it was the deep of winter, where I normally pretty much live in isolation for the most part in any case due to my growing lack of will to drive in “winter driving conditions.”  It has simply gotten too crazy out there on the long highway drive of open roads where people seem to think it fine to drive 60 miles per hour on ice and snow covered roads.  Not me!  I know that studded snow tires, four-wheel drive, all wheel drive, none will effectively allow breaking to work when suddenly needed.  Studs probably help a bit, but just that, a bit.  Being older and knowing that I don’t belong in a vehicle at any time by my own nature, shows me this.  So I changed my way, adapting to the crazy of modern driving by removing myself from it under those conditions.  Then come a pandemic that altered the rest of life, while being unable to play my music.  It was and remains somewhat a time of profound personal change.

So winter removed my will to make any doctor appointments, for reasons stated above.  There are no doctors or medical facilities locally so that drive is the only way to reach for any medical assistance, so I made a plan to get with that the following April.  But before April came around the pandemic ceased all will to enter any medical facility, knowing that ill people go to medical facilities, that condition magnified in my mind to the degree of making zero attempts until late August of 2020.  That didn’t work out so well as many years ago my personal physician closed down practice and I had not acquired another physician, thus I had to find a new one.  Long story but, it didn’t work out very effectively.  This doctor insisted that I was suffering from arthritis, without actually listening to what I was saying.  We did however get an x-ray, which showed no arthritis.  The problem then was the doctor was too slow in reviewing the x-ray report and providing a referral, which pushed me past my no driving or making appointments during winter.  So that was totally a fruitless process that provided an incompetent person a lot of money for providing near nothing.

I survived the winter and spring of 2020 rather demoralized at first without music, then compounded by the throws of the pandemic, quarantine and full on isolation.  I did write a song lyric in May, but playing it, that was near impossible.  Even so I sucked up the pain and discomfort of the finger enough to compose that tune, yet after that point, the finger again entirely disallowed its use for playing the instrument.  They were challenging times, seemingly my music was beyond reach when one day I stumbled upon a game changer.  If memory serves me, it was late May when listening to an old Muddy Waters interview recording, on something in my archive (I don’t recall the actual source), the interviewer asked, so how do you tune your guitar.  He answered saying something about it, terming it as “Spanish Tuning.”  I’d never heard of such a thing, but he then played each individual string on the guitar in his hand.  I stopped the recording, grabbed a guitar, then backed up the recording  to hear the notes so that I could figure out what they are: D (6th string), G, B, D, G, D (1st string).  Now I have this very old guitar having a flat neck, so I got it out, tuned it to this Spanish Tuning, got out a slide that has been knocking around the place here unused for the most part for many years, put the guitar on my lap, and within 5 minutes I was playing an old John Prine tune!  I was quite amazed or maybe astonished is a better fitting adjective.  

That changed my world.  I could play, it was limiting doing so in a keyed way, yet playing, singing songs again, quickly almost effortlessly, which filled my soul with hope and joy, bringing a smile to my entire being.  Sure it was weird, one playing this old low quality parlor guitar that I had gotten for 50 bucks at a yard sale some years prior for for the purpose of having something to take into situations unsuitable for a nice guitars, but playing music again, that was full on special. 

In the following days, I came up with an idea, that this tuning could be used on a square-neck dobro, so after some searching over the coming days, I ordered one from a shop that I’ve used before.  Several days later, I received it, a Dobro (brand) square-neck dobro.  I tuned it to that Spanish Tuning, to find that the strings are not good at holding the low tone D 6th string.  So much so that I decided I’d have to get a special order string or two in order to compensate.  Of course life where I live it doesn’t offer up supplies of most kinds, much less musical things.  Still I did proceed to learn some proper music with the dobro as well as building a better foundation for finger picking.  I don’t play it very much now but…  

Then came July, and an evening looking at the local section for musical instruments on Craig’s List, where I found a 1973 Martin D-35 at a very unbelievable price.  My inquiry led to purchasing it the next day.  I realized that it was a very sound instrument, beautiful, but the owner had had some crazy stupid modifications done in its history.  Knowing that it was a simple fix to make this instrument sing, I did so over the course of a time span.  I took it to a very good luthier I have trusted for many years.  I retrieved it from him in late August and my odyssey of learning to play with three fingers began.

Over the following year I accomplished that pretty well, bringing music back into my life an a daily basis.  It has been quite a journey that now finds my index finger coming back toward normal, or nearly healed from what had occurred.  I have yet a way to go but I am retraining it at this point.  I am still kind of limited in its use when trying to play too much, greater than 2 hours as my will so often pushes me into.  I now know to pay attention to its sensitivity and stop using it for some particular things when it signals me to stop.  The long and short of it is the journey has been long, frustrating and other things, yet the journey is providing a lot of joy now as I am again working with my music most days/nights through time.  I can’t foresee performance in my near future as the pandemic continues its rampage on humanity, but I can at least accept that with music back in my life.  There is a lot that I can do, some others that I have to avoid yet for a while, but I believe this finger is going to be fully functional again in the coming months.  The pandemic, I am not so sure about.  

Last night, laying in bed before dropping off into that space of dreamy slumber, I thought of days long ago, when I would right a different blog like thing nearly daily about the joys of snow skiing, when I could and did do that near daily during the ski season.  Reflections on this blog being more or less abandon due to not writing music as the above complications have played out, is a thing I know as true.  As this past year has unfolded I’ve gotten back to  playing and recording some of the numerous songs written over the years.  After several surprisingly successful recording sessions over the past six weeks or so, I am again gaining a fair degree of inspiration which may lead to writing other songs.  And then still, I can morph the blog’s initial subject into a space that also includes writing about the process of recording as they unfold.  It seemed a good idea while flat on the bed in the dark of a winter’s night, which still holds true in the light of today.  I’ll see what actually happens as time marches on.