You Say It's Your Birthday!

My stepmom's birthday was yesterday, so last night Alyssa grabbed the phone and told me we were going to sing happy birthday to her. Alyssa keeps track of birthdays in our families and usually handles sending gifts too. I'm not sure how she got this job. I think she realized that if it was going to be done to her satisfaction (er, okay, if it was going to get done at all), well, she wasn't going to get much help from me. But hey, I mow the lawn!

Anyway, she grabbed the phone and then wondered aloud if I knew enough chords to play the guitar while we sang. A trip to the Web and a chord sheet later, I was strumming along. Well, that's not totally accurate. I don't know how to play chords and the melody at the same time yet, so I basically played a chord, sung until the next chord change, and then played another chord. But it was fun!

Keith Urban, look out!

Guitar update

I've been working on the G and C chords the past few days. G is a real bear, mainly b/c you have to use your pinky on the first string. The pinky is a most unreliable finger!

I also tried my hand at finger-picking last night. Alyssa asked, "Have you learned how to finger-pick yet? I love finger-picking." And me, the chivalrous knight determined to impress his damsel, began slowly, very slowly, to finger-pick. Eventually I was able to play my little verse from "Prison Girl" using a finger-picking pattern. These diversions are what keep going b/c they help me taste what's up ahead if I keep at it.

Today's Slavery

I'm taking an online course in Catholic Social Teaching and left this response to a classmate's post:

Thanks for your point about the reductive power of poverty. That poverty forcefully reduces people's identities to the struggle for survival, which is largely bound up with one's employment, is heartbreaking. I can't fathom an existence wherein I live hand to mouth, from one paycheck to the next, without any time for reading or guitar or long conversations over beer or coffee.

This gets at a more insidious consequence of low-wage life than being unable to make rent, awful as that is. Poverty does not merely steal livelihoods; it steals life. It reduces human beings to human workings. "Slaves" may be the more appropriate term, for slaves are those who belong to another, whose very bodies are not their own. What else are low-wage workers? We thought we put slavery behind us with the Civil War, but all we've really done is smeared lipstick across its face and dressed it up to look appropriate for our more "enlightened" times.

Tenuous Contentment

Earlier this week I dreamt I was waterskiing on two sharks, which pretty well sums up how I feel these days. I'm hurtling forward and having a great time, but it all feels so tenuous--like anytime those sharks could tire of pulling me, turn, and eat me for lunch.

Quick Plug

My wife's blog is over at www.mybetterself.blogspot.com. Check it out! Alyssa is one of the most interesting people I know!!!

Smattering

This morning I woke up at 5AM with a possible chorus for the song I started a few days ago:

Angels fall, angels fall
And it's a mystery how, it's a mystery how
they'll live again

Only thing is, I'm not sure I know the right chords for it yet!

Got out of bed at 5:30 b/c I couldn't sleep. And because it was too early to play guitar (my wife was still asleep), I read some of McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. I'm meeting with a group of Quakers this Friday night to talk about the book. Should be interesting.

Bought The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan CD last night. (Boy, that dates me. I need an iPod!) Loving the music . . .

It looks like I'm going to take an on-line course on Catholic Social Teaching through Notre Dame this spring. One of the texts is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed, which I've wanted to read for a while now.

Have not missed a day of guitar practice since I bought it earlier this month. The calluses are finally coming in.

Prison Girl

There's no getting around it. Learning chords can get monotonous and tiring. I'm still working on A, D, and E, and I don't feel comfortable moving on just yet. I'm not fast enough at moving from chord to chord; my fingers don't instinctively know where to go yet.

But I realized as I was practicing last night that if I didn’t do something different for a while, I was going to become really frustrated. “Hey,” I thought, “I wonder if I already know enough to write a little song.” For a while now when I played an A chord, the phrase “I saw her at the store” came to mind. I took my lead from there, and wrote the following verse using A, D, and E chords.

I saw her at the store
She carried letters by her side
And when I looked at her, it’s funny,
She just cried.

I wondered ’bout her story
Was she a pilgrim on a journey?
She saw my question
And here’s what she said:

“I’m a girl just out of prison
These are letters from my children
And now I’m looking for a present
To give my son.”

I call it Prison Girl.

Then, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, it dawned on me that the chord progression for the second stanza (do songs have stanzas?) was very similar to a Johnny Cash tune called “Give My Love to Rose.” It was 11:00, and my wife and I both needed sleep, but I knew I wouldn't be able to rest until I listened to "Give My Love to Rose" (a GREAT song, by the way). Turns out, Cash’s song is about a dying man who was just let out of prison! Without consciously being aware of it (I honestly didn't think about "Give My Love to Rose" until I was in bed), I had borrowed a portion of Cash’s tune and even a part of his song's story for my own! I find this fascinating.

Progress Report

It feels good to blog about how my guitar practice is going, like I'm keeping a chronicle of my progress. Last night I continued working on the E, A, and D major triad chords. Practice, practice, practice. Right now I can't play very long before the tips of my fingers are just screaming with pain. This morning, taking a tip from a friend, I began pressing the tips of my fingers against the edge of my desk to continue toughening them up. While talking with a colleague, I began pressing my fingers against the edge of a book. Driving today, I pressed my fingers against the sharp edge of my travel mug. I've become obsessed with calluses, as I have assurance from several people that once I have them, I'll be able to play as long as I want.

Isn't it interesting the way our skin works? If you keep applying gradual searing pressure, our skin toughens. Who knew? And it's like so much in life. You go through something time and time again, and eventually you become immune to it. I guess the trick is in deciding where to be tough and where to be soft.

Three more...

Last night I learned three new chords. The triad chords E, A, and D. These chords involve similar fingerings to E5, A5, and D5, which I learned earlier this week, but on the triads you add one more finger to one more string. It sounds easy, but man that one more string is a killer. It's going to take some practice to get good at transitioning from one to another without buzzing or dampening a string. And ouch, my fingers hurt!

Last night I practiced the power chords first (E5, A5, and D5). I thought I was doing pretty well, so I listened to the next lesson on the DVD, about the triads. I almost wish I would have started with the triads because my fingers hurt so much, by the time I got to them I was spent. Note to self: start fresh when learning new chords. Oh well, there's always tonight!

Incidentally, these triad chords are the basis for countless popular tunes. The E triad is one of the biggest sounding chords there is because you play all the strings. It really fills up the room, and it feels so good to jam on that thing, wailing like the next Hendrix.

New Guitar

Well, I did it. I took the plunge and used some Christmas money to buy a guitar. I've learned how to tune it, I know three chords (E5, A5, and D5), and I'm working on some calluses. My fingers sting as I type this.

I bought a Fender Acoustic starter kit for about 200 dollars at a Guitar Center here in GR. I walked in right when the store opened to beat the crowd and was seized by the impulse to turn around and walk out. The place was a tower of amps with hundreds of guitars hanging on every square inch of wall space. Big bluesy guitars. Little bitty electrics that didn't even look like guitars. Red guitars. Blue guitars. Green guitars. Somebody banged on a drum set in the back. It was overwhelming. I made my way to the acoustics, which fortunately were in a soundproof room to the side. But there again, so many guitars! What's a budding Eric Clapton to do? Luckily, a nice sales clerk, Scotty, must have seen my angst and asked if he could help me. Scotty is in his twenties with a seventies hair cut and earrings that widen his earlobes into holes you can see through. He seemed guitarish enough.

I told him I'd always wanted to play the guitar and got some Christmas money. "So I'm really just off the street," I said. He smiled politely and suggested a starter kit, pointing to a pile of boxes on the ground.

I felt like a loser. Here were all these beautiful guitars hanging on the walls in all different shapes, sizes, and colors, and this guy was pointing me to a bunch of boxes? A boring vanilla-colored guitar was pictured on the front. It had a "real wooden top." Big whoop. "What about one of these on the wall, which I see are on sale?" I asked, thinking he'd forgotten about an incredible deal for just such a customer as me.

"I really recommed a starter kit, man," he said. "They get you into the guitar for not a lot of money, and they have some bonus beginner features like an electric tuner and an instructional DVD to get you going."

Beginner features? We don't need no stinking beginner features.

I cleared my throat. "One thing I've heard is that if you get a really cheap guitar, it may be so hard to press the strings down that you get discouraged faster than you would otherwise and you'll be more likely to give up." I figured this bit of inside knowledge would impress him.

"That's called playability," he said (this guy's good, I thought), "and I can assure you these starter guitars are very playable." Starter, I daydreamed. Reminds me of when I was "Peewee" baseball player or a "Guppie" swimmer. "Besides," he continued, "whether or not someone gives up has much more to do with will power than the guitar." Easy there, big guy, I thought, don't lecture me on will power. You're talking to someone who's trained for and run a 25K, someone who wades through 300-page manuscripts for a living! I wrote the frickin' book on will power, dude. (Whew! I'm getting tired of writing this. Better stop soon.)

Then Scotty turned and faced me. "I really think you'll like the kit. It's a great way to go." All right, all right. A call to my wife and a flash of plastic later, I walked out with my Fender.

Now we'll see about the will power part.