Vintage Olympia OM C1 CE

Isn't this just so prettty?
Soon it will be in my hands.
I am such an addict!

Guitar work seems to be distracting enough from my distractions that I get distracted.

So....I'm sick. Not I'm gonna kick off tomorrow so gather round and let me share my final wishes sick. But sick enough that the sickness distracts me from any activity that needs concerted concentration over a long period of time. Leaving an activity and then returning after a bout of what I'm bouting is exhausting and requires putting the head in the same place. This is not always easy. But guitar work seems to be distracting enough from my distractions that I get distracted. The changing of strings, The oiling of a fretboard. The examination of the saddle and the nut. The repairs I am capable of. Contemplating the repairs I would like to be capable of. The choosing of the tool and then the re-choosing of a tool. The playing. Ah the playing. I'm improving. It has taken a few decades and the passage through many events both personal and universal. Playing around with a chord or a note. Hearing how that sounds on a variety of guitars. They are all different in how they sing. My ears have become more discerning. I now hear the precision of a high note in the midst of a muddled low note. How each guitar plays the same progression differently. How I play each guitar differently.  How the same string of notes played on a different guitar can either grow or just wither. The difference in the gauge of the strings and how they feel under the callouses of the tips of my left hand. The differences in the brands of the strings and the component metals and coatings.  I order my tools and then reorder them. I love the smell of the wood and the oil and the polish. I smell each guitar like a rose and inhale the differences in age and wood. Mahogany does not smell the same as rosewood. The feel and texture. A satin finished cedar top is so markedly different from a gloss finish of spruce. In the midst of the slow rearranging of my bodies priorities I have been given....shit....I have given myself a continuing low intensity joy. When I told my son Oren that I was ill but that I probably wouldn't kick off for a while I got to joking about the funeral. I said he should try to do it as cheaply as possible. He asked me if he could use a guitar case for the casket. I love that kid!

They come and go..........

 The above painting is

Abstract Guitar by Trisha Lamoreaux

I've been off of this for quite some time and it was not from any desire to ignore the thing. It came from confronting various not quite serious diseases that, in truth, are serious. Really. Mostly just annoying but cumulatively exhausting. I have begun to develop a new relationship with my interior and exterior. It pisses me off. I've fed it for years. Washed it almost every day and done my best to provide it with its various animal oriented pleasures. What do I get in return? An array of stuff that has resulted in my ingesting, every day, so many pills that I can make little pill men or pill faces every morning.. The palette of colors and variety of sizes has a certain degree of  interest but it is very fleeting. But, enough about me....let's talk about guitars.

They are coming and going with great rapidity these days. Having had  my income reduced.....REDUCED!!! I have started to buy and sell guitars. Some mean little. I have an ARIA upstairs that has a severe case of Martin envy. Not that it sounds awful or that it looks dreadful. It doesn't sound dreadful. It is just a little soulless.

There are others that have come my way that are seriously difficult to consign to the sale sign. There was another Aria. Oh twas a magnificent thing McGee. Looked real and solid and sounded like bells with cinnamon over ice. There's a Yamaha that is a known quantity. Been around. Reproduced and multiplied. Inhabits whole sub continents. It has had labels of all hues. From the coveted red to the respected tan and a few stops in the black region. But it is solid and light and plays like someone who has rediscovered tap dancing on bronze strings. My fingers have such an easy time moving up and down the neck. There is no effort to a chord. Certainly it ain't no slide guitar.

So, eventually, I do sell them. They are brief but passionate affairs of short lived intense devotion. I carry pictures of them in my wallet and sigh when I show them around the bar.