Breaking Contact

copyright Lady Linda Gaye Music (me - Ted)

I’m breaking contact

I’m breaking contact with you

I’m breaking contact

This transmission is through

I’m hunkered down in my basement bunker

Like some frightened spelunker

While the rebels appear to have seized control

They’ve got the television station

They’ve got the FM and the AM

They’ve got all the social media too

Chorus

It happened rather quickly

I didn’t notice because I was busy

Attending to the repair of my credit rating

Now the governmental structure

Seems to have severely ruptured

And there’s some new flag on the flagpole waving

Chorus

No one asked for my permission

For this political transition

For this hairpin turn to the severe right

And I’m correct in guessing

That they think they have God’s blessing

This can really help when you’re gearing up for the fight

Chorus

Our representative Democracy

Appears to have turned into a theocracy

With some elected official assuming the mantle of a Pope

And they’ve got this fifty question test

To determine if you lean to left

And if you do you might as well abandon all your hope

Chorus

I’ve a cousin in Jerusalem

I think I’ll get out and live with him

Certainly these patriots won’t be sad to see me go

I’ll be packed in short order

To make a run for the border

What I’ll do then I am sure that I don’t know

Chorus

It turns out that the place you did not believe in
was the chilly place
where winter could no longer be held back
was the quiet place
where you can wait and wait and wait
and realize that whatever it is
you have to get it yourself
was the place where you begin to become the same color as the
background
and people forget your name
except on holidays when remembrance is mandated and paid for
in phrases used again and again
the beginning with your name written in
and the ending with a hasty scrawl
that needs the return address to be deciphered
when there is not enough time
and you suspect there never will be
when you find out that the incline is downwards
and it's only grace it its angle

It is the inevitability of  unasked for
reevaluation

The re-remembering of moments and events
The snapshots that stand out
Even thought the album was not requested
or assembled.

I am past the point
of being able to fix
anything.

No need to put the lean-to back up
if I have no intention of inhabiting it,

It is just that I remembered, vaguely, being unkind
and I am tired of unkindness
real or imagined
current or historical.

Perhaps I am just putting
the top of the bureau in order.
I remember some things.
Who knows?

There are no dead 

who did not die

too soon

The aspen

The fir

Memories

like shadowed ferns

Suddenly facing the unexpected sunlight

from the tree's

absence

Grow brown spots

Grow dry and die

too quickly.

More quickly than you would have thought

The light of our life keeps our shadows alive.

Get up and read the unfinished poem

to people who don't really care.

Stand with sloppy sheets of paper

held

in an unwashed

hand

with imperfect fingernails

and read.

Forget to run spell check

Make an error or two

Let your rough and unsanded emotion result in splinters

in the fingernails

of all who touch the poem.

Don't even try to imply

pain

Don't let lust arrive incognito

Don't offer polite moisture as

tears.

Get some spittle in your

manicured mouth.

Get up.

Get up.

Sing a song and hit the wrong notes.

We are all listening for your beautiful mistakes

I have plagiarized me. I have decided that legal action is unwarranted but delightfully bizarre. I will write the music tonight...or not. I am sure there will be changes dictated by the music but this stuff is sure fun.

Longing is the memory
we do not have
but search for.

Somewhere you pass the place
where the memory was
supposed to be

As if caught in a current
you pass your landing

On the river

Like a movement

Behind you in the forest
leaving only rustling leaves.

Longing is the memory

We can’t quite remember

Like the heat of August

In the middle of December

Like the first rush of love

The very first taste of sex

You can’t quite remember

What the funhouse mirror reflects

No you can’t quite remember

What your mirror reflects

Longing is the coldest night

In the middle of

Summer

No matter what you do

There’s no way

To get warm

Memories like viruses

Eat away at your

Self completion

You’ve lost the talent

To protect yourself

From harm

Longing is the memory

We can’t quite remember

Like the heat of August

In the middle of December

Like the first rush of love

The very first taste of sex

You can’t quite remember

What the funhouse mirror reflects

No you can’t quite remember

What your mirror reflects

I’ve got a poem and some stories

I’ve got way

too many pictures

I’ve got some stubborn suspicions

About a past that might be real

Or not

If I could go back

Well I swear I wouldn’t

I wouldn't even try

I’ve got some stubborn suspicions

About a past that might be real

Or not

Longing is the memory

We can’t quite remember

Like the heat of August

In the middle of December

Like the first rush of love

The very first taste of sex

You can’t quite remember

What the funhouse mirror reflects

No you can’t quite remember

What your mirror reflects

Fall 1994

Longing is the memory
we
do
not have
but search for.

Somewhere
you pass the place
where the memory
was
supposed
to be
as if
caught in a current
you pass your landing on the river
or
on the wrong train
you see your station rush past you.

And
what was expected
receded
into the distance
so quickly
you only saw it with
your
peripheral vision.

Like a movement behind you in the forest
leaving only rustling leave.
You can't remember its
color
or its
texture
or its smell.

Longing is the memory
we
do
not have
but search for.

The past you
never had
kept in a locket
with
no picture.

Your future gone off to war
like a chaste lover
who
did not
return.

 March 14, 2007

Let us put our graves
in the
middle
of things.

Our people interred in surprising
and
inappropriately appropriate places.

At the core of a
carousel
at the corner of
Main and broad

Beneath a bench on a
subway platform.

In your
bathroom
At the table near the
window
At the ice cream stand that opens
each summer
at the beach

Around the Christmas Table
Around the Seder Table

In a
book
In a
song.

Perhaps powdered and co-joined with
a cloud.

In the
ocean

In that
wave

In this
shell

In the
mirror

In these
hands

Mixed into the mortar of our
houses

Not in the
suburbs
of the
deceased.

1988

it's a strange

membrane

that separates us

so often

and

you are right

we have

no

common

language

Perhaps

in bed

after we've

made

love

when I get up and turn around

and see your

smile

and

closed eyes

then we have said something

we both

understand

in the end
it is all
the settling of mud to
fossilize
the outline

the substance
dissolved like brown sugar
in a cup
of
winter cider

Memories drift past us every day
like the places we pass
on the way
to work
or to
the corner store.

They appear in the
middle
of another thought
like a pressed flower found
as you turn
the pages
of an old
book.

You remember picking
the flower

the metaphor becomes
the memory
itself

I wonder what tool it was
that first diminished us?

The chimp
who saw ants crawling on a stick

was he then less?
and not
as
hungry

Odd Guitars

It's out of hand really. My infatuation with guitars is ongoing and quite pleasurable. It is my meditation or certainty the most meditative activity I have ever unintentionally meditated into. My collecting has altered over the years. When I first started I was buying what intrigued me as a neophyte. An Epiphone Jumbo; a Yamaha 12 a laminated Mahogany Washburn. My ears were not trained. I have played for years but my ability to hear and absorb tone and clarity was an afterthought. Now it is a post thought. I am prepared and attuned. My hand immediately judges the depth and width of a neck. My right arm finds itself comfortable or awkward as it sits on the lower bout and I begin to pick and/or strum. The sounds drift up and I know that what I hear isn't what someone in front of me hears but as I do not perform...so who cares.As I dig deeper into the mysteries of guitars I find myself fascinated by the fact that some of them are mysteries. I have this guitar which has the name "Boston" on the headstock. If I do a search using the terms "Boston" and "Guitar" I usually get information about the band Boston or various Boston based music stores. I have come across a "Boston" brand guitar that is only sold in England (so far) but the one shown is just a basic laminate Dread. Which is not to insult that breed. I have also learned that you can't generalize about guitars. One laminate top is not the same as another just as one solid top is not the same as another. Wood is just too variable as people are variable and as the guitars are made of wood from here and there and from different trees absorbing different nutrients from different soils every guitar will be slightly different. Not that makers have not striven for uniformity and predictability. Ovation did it with those aluminum neck Applause guitars in the late seventies and the various carbon acoustic makers (Rainsong, Composite Acoustics and more) certainly attempt it now. I have a great fondness for the Composite Acoustic sound but that is a topic reserved for the future. So this Boston guitar is a schizo thing. Not an acoustic electric but with a cutaway. Relatively intricate trimming but lower end tuners that I replaced last week because of a few too many rattles. It has a pickguard that seems almost Tolkien-esque in its odd shape and color. I have searched friends and the guitar does not exist anywhere else but in my "guitar room". I am probably wrong. There must be another mustn't there? It might have been a prototype but how do I find out? Beats the shit out of me it does. It sounds fine. Not magnificent but fine and it may be an illusion. I have written in other places and at other times that I was in a serious car wreck many years ago and have thought, now and then, that I am in a coma somewhere and this life has been an unconscious hallucination. The "Boston" guitar may be some sort of shaky proof of this possibility.








Then there is the Chenault. (Gesundheit). Once again the amount of information available about the brand is next to nil. More that what there is about the Boston but a more mysterious compilation of statement. One fellow out there in the digital universe says they are made in Tennessee. If they are I can't find out a damn thing about them. Another biped says he bought one from someone on a a Mexican street. Odd. Someone else said he bought one in England. Probably at the same store that carries Boston guitars. This one, the Chenault (Gesundheit) is quite something. A perfect size neck for my hands. A burst finish that is better and more attractive than any other I've seen. Expensive and well made tuners. A delightful action. A wonderful sound. The thing about the brand is that even though the name is almost non-existent the design of the logo and the choice of typeface and how it is all put together is quite attractive. Not thrown together in some helter skelter attempt to put some name at the top of the headstock or to imitate Martin.  It is a first rate guitar. The sound and quality of finish and playability are splendid BUT once again I can find no info about the brand. I can't even be sure where it comes from put I have a feeling (which is the name of a guitar brand from China) that it isn't Tennessee.

What I have learned in my years of collecting and buying and selling and collecting and buying and selling is that there is an infinite variance to guitars. Not one is the same as another. In addition price and parts is not always a simple way of determining sound and playability. I have another acquisition. A Harmony Marquis H370. maybe from the 1970s. It has a laminate top and laminated backs and sides and open tuners and all in all it is not composed of selected super duper selected woods and assembled by artisans who used to work with Michelangelo when he was building guitars. Yet, with all that the guitar isn't it plays wonderfully and sounds just fine...thank you. Not that Villette guitars (ooo I love them) or Lowdens are not a trip and a half to play but price is not the only factor. There is an infinite variability to guitars from the same plant constructed on the same day. I love that aspect of this hobby of mine. I do love guitars.

That's all for now kids. Thanks for joining me here in the peanut gallery.

This guitar sold so this is just an..what..odd moment.

Good Morning. How's by you? The family? Okay.....this is my YouTube location for embarrassing moments captured in the ether and preserved electronically.

http://www.youtube.com/user/obtusemuse/featured

Strings

There is so frigging much I do NOT know about guitars. There is constant learning going on. Constant. My range of not knowing is broad and deep. If my lack of knowledge were knowledge I would be a wise human sitting cross legged on some cloudy mountaintop greeting the hoard of acolytes waiting in line to experience the utter wisdomfullness of me. I could go on and on about what I don't know but for this brief series of sentences I thought I would concentrate on what I don't know about guitar strings. When I was a LAD (Lacking Any Depth) I would keep strings on forever and when I bought them I would carefully avoid any sort of thought of gauge or content and just but by price or coolness of the label. (I now ponder if that was how I picked female companions.) I have learned over the years that there are some serious guitarists who don't change strings that often at all. A few days ago I decided to take a walk to my local Sam Ash in the cool, cool, cool of a winter's evening. I need the exercise as I have been ILL for some months and spent that dedicated time not doing very much of anything but feeling like shit. The last statement taking on a whole new dimension because I have Crohn's Disease. The avowed purpose of the hike was to obtain some lightweight guitar strings. By that I mean electric guitar strings because it seems that acoustic strings bottom out at 10's on the first E. This line of experimentation was brought about by an old Ya Ma Ha I have. It is an F 75 made in Japan. This is a good thing. I enjoy playing it because it is so easy to p0ay and I had concluded that was due to the lightweight gauge strings that were on it when I acquired it. I have not changed them. The question was how light? Hell if I know. But I figured that one step down ( 9 on the first E) would be a place to start. I bought two packs. A Dunlop and a d'addario both of the same gauge. (I will mention here a fact obvious to many....not all string manufacturers are the same. Really? you say.) I walked home feeling quite dedicated to the healing process and went upstairs to the "guitar" room and proceeded to decide which guitar would be the center of the experiment. I inhaled and reached for my Guild DCE-1. A magnificent guitar seriously neglected by me because it sounded a little thumpy. I removed the old strings and took the opportunity of having a destringed guitar to oil and clean it. Then I began to install the new strings. I chose the Dunlop because the guy in the store liked them and as they were only $3.99. In the process the neglected Westerly masterpiece used the newly installed strings to puncture me a few times. As the finish is matte I am convinced it wanted to ingest my hemoglobin as I dripped small droplets on the top of the guitar. Don't neglect your guitars ladies and gents. They don't take it lightly. As you probably know tuning new strings is a round and round process. Start one of the bracket E's and work your way up or down and then start over because the string you started on is already out of tune. Once done with the first circuit a few more are called for as the strings stretch and slip.Finally the strings seemed content to rest where they are supposed to rest and I began to play. It sounded great. GREAT!!!!! I couldn't put the Guild down. It was delightful to hear. Of course that was for me. I asked Beth for her opinion and she said it sounded just fine. That is always one of the "problems". You are in front of the guitar and I am above it and behind the soundhole. So even though I may be just delighted you might not be. Encouraged by my success I moved on to a Peavey LANDOLA  dread from Finland that I have. I have removed the Peavey name from the well designed headstock. The top is tight spruce and the back and sides are mahogany. The neck is maple. This is one sweet looking guitar. I had trouble with the strings before. A buzz somewhere and I was worried that a lighter gauge would start the whole insect thing again. I removed the old strings and, once again, took the opportunity to clean and oil. I then installed the d-addario lightweights and, of course, once again was attacked by another guitar that felt neglected. Afterwards the sound was not as bright as the Guild. Guitars, being complex creatures, can have all sorts of variable so it might be the strings and it might be the wood and it might be the depth and it might be........ I suspect the strings. But what do I know. I will get more Dunlops and see what happens. However, it sounded dandy this morning before I went to work so who knows. Next lightweights strings on an EKO 12 string prior to selling it. Let's see how that turns out.

The Best Place For Strings!!!

 I love buying strings from these people. best prices; best selection and great deals!!!



http://www.stringsandbeyond.com

Guitar - גיטרה‎

I'm beginning to get my callouses back. That's a good sign. When I first began to humanize from the worst of the Crohn's flareup they were all but gone. The enthusiasm took longer. It just seemed as if the amount of effort needed to actually sit down and play was used up in more mundane tasks. Things like walking and eating and showering and breathing. I looked at tall of them, the guitars, and tried to remember what the point was. I excavated my psyche to determine where that joy had come from and after sifting the debris I wasn't initially able to find an artifact that gave proof of anything. Slowly it has returned. A new acquaintence (perhaps a friend eventually) came over to look at the 35+ guitars. What fascinated him in particular was a G J Gould Guitar with a solid spruce top and rosewood back and sides made in Israel. Handmade because in the 1970's (when it was made) I assume that the level of computerized or even mass production of guitars was non-existent. It is beautiful and it sounds magnificent. There is no way to calculate the value of it because there are next to none left on the planet. When it was new, according to my research, it was about $400 which, inflated out, is about $1800 to $1900 bucks. For me having a guitar this exquisite; that sounds this good and is made in Israel is a miracle. It is my reward for doing something right at sometime. 

I have started collecting and buying and selling again. I have four guitars up on Ebay and some that will go there soon. I have some that need some love and care. Lowering an action or just changing the strings to a lighter gauge. It is not work but it is work but it isn't work. It is a meditation of sorts. It is a joy.

Hi. I guess I'm healing.

(I'll post a picture (s) soon.