Sitting, Waiting, Wishing


Once again I find myself in that strange semiconscious state between night shifts. Having gotten home from work at 8am and crashed until noon, I'm neither fully alert yet nor in a mood to try any more sleep. So like my other states of being, I have developed a routine that seems to work:

1. Small coffee
2. Run (more like shuffle) with the dog
3. Write something
4. Chores I don't much care to do (laundry, bills)
5. Guitar, guitar, guitar

I like #5 the most, and feel I get the most out of a good practice session when I am in boxers and a ratty tee, not fully rested.  For reasons I cannot explain, during these moments I prefer to try new songs rather than play old ones. I guess that's just my brain wanting to focus on something original so there is no room in my head to rehash the previous night's ER scenes of abdominal pain and flying secretions. 

Today I've stepped outside my “nineties grunge“ comfort zone and am teaching myself "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing" by Jack Johnson. Nice tune, catchy. He really alters his singing cadence line to line, so the real challenge in learning it is not so much the chords, or even the strumming, but matching the pace of his lyrics to the timing of the music. Meh, no biggie. I'll get it down. I always seem to. I won't play it for anyone yet, and certainly not at open mic for a while, though. Since I have been playing guitar these last three years I've come to realize that I won’t perform a song in public until it plays me. In other words, practice it so many times (usually several hundred) so that upon strumming  the opening chord the song will just pour out like a trickling stream, without any thinking. And THAT takes repetition and more repetition.

Anything in life doing once is worth doing 1,000 times. ;-)

Have a great weekend!


Comments

  1. Joey SJuly 3, 2020 at 8:22 AM

    I know Exactly what you mean about playing songs in public. My biggest obstacle is always remembering the words. That was always the last fence I had to get over to make it sound smooth.

    ReplyDelete

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