It's not that I've run out of things to write about. I haven't. I've been running a guitar business and that has taken so much time. But if you're going to have your own leetle business there is a great pleasure in having it be about something you love. I love guitars. I do. I do. I love the feel of my callouses on my left hand's fingers. I love the screwing around without regard to official chords and tunings. What I do is buy and sell guitars. I love the buying. I am not overly keen on selling. However, as I am in need of whatever extra cash I can create I just grit my teeth ( and the dentist has high co-pays by the by) and sell the damn things. Currently there are two. I'll get boring here and you can bail out if you feel a need. No hard feelings. One is an itty bitty little travel thingy called a "Joey" by Washburn. I am no fan of Washburns. For those of you who care for them I ask your forgiveness, I don't like Washburn because even though there was indeed a real company called Washburn that was in, I hope I'm right here, Chicago it went mechullah (Google the word. Yiddish if you must know). Bye bye. The name has been resurrected and there is no connection with the original company other than the fact that, I think, the new company is in Chicago and...well....that's it really. It is not a Washburn. It is something else. Not a bad something else but something else. I understand the marketing aspect. I do indeed. Another similar story can be woven about Epiphone. I actually did a good deal of reading about that company. It is gone also. However it is now the name Gibson puts on it's Gibsons that look like Gibsons but aren't Gibsons because they are made somewhere else where the medium of exchange is not the slowly shrinking greenback. Not that they aren't nice for the money. Well, let me take that back. Some of them are okay. I had one once. A Jumbo. It took three takes to get that picture distributed. I had to go through two of them before I got one that played like it was a guitar and not a representation of a guitar. More of an art project. Oh...this little thing. (I do go on.) is just so adorable. Looks like a larger ukulele or Bilbo's favorite guitar. It is lovely. Solid spruce top. Ovankol back and sides and a neck that is a weapon in six states. "Please mister don't hit me with that guitar. I really did enjoy the song. Honest!" Sounds like feces in E but dances a soprano sort of beauty in A. I am selling it. I do not want to lose it but I will sell it. I am hard man. Rock hard. Knife at the ankle and a sense of doubt about everyone. Arghhhh. Another one is more disturbing. It is an Aria (owner of the Japanese company that made it was anmed Arai. See. Aria...Arai? Get it. See if you take the i and the a) It is just beautiful. Beautiful. It has a headstock that angles in. I like that. Less stress on the strings. It has a solid spruce top and mahogany back and sides and neck and headstock also I think. It is magnificent. I mean that. It sings like a combination of Janis Joplin. Maria Muldaur and Judy Collins. It picks great and strums wonderfully. It could disguise itself as some luthier's wet dream. I love it. I will sell it. I have to. It's a business isn't it? For me a very difficult one. However it seems consistent with my life. A life where things kept changing without anyone sending me a note about it. Wrote a song once. "Nothing's for always. I won't pretend that the things I've seen today will come again. Nothing's for always. So far away from now I count the places that I've been. And I count my sometimes friends." So careers come and careers go. Lovers have come and gone. Wives. Gone one way or another. Some out of annoyance some suffering from a severe case of dead. I can't forget most of them. I have remnants of the careers. Radio. Politics. Money. Company's I've owned and businesses I've started. Places I've lived. So. This exquisite guitar will go. It will. I will never forget it. That's me. I am my own index. Hey. "Nothing's for always. I won't pretend."
