Now, I'm not that hot a guitarist but as this is about one of the few times a year I play in front of people, I've been practicing on the back porch every evening for the past few weeks, going through a short list of party pieces, getting them down. Playing guitar is like running or doing yoga or or any involved activity--unless you do it every day, you lose so much and it is so hard to get it back. God, and I play so little otherwise, that even after a couple of weeks of daily practice, still it seems to take me about a half hour before I'm up to speed, where I sound OK to myself and have some flow going on...

And this is playing the same damn songs I've been playing when I play guitar from the year Zero, mind you. I am no virtuoso.

But I do enjoy it when I get there to that state of flow and I can play the same damn thing over and over and never repeat it exactly the same way, syncopating the melody or ornamenting it just so and different each time through and that is so much fun in itself.


So, anyways, I'm doing your basic American Primitive Guitar mix of John Hurt, Skip James, John Fahey and such songs I know and this thing has happened three times now.

Now. around here, house finches are the sweetest and best singers of all the birds. They have this long liquid trill of notes that goes up and down the scale and they can get quite ornamented with their singing themselves.

And this time of year, they go from dawn to dusk with it and are, to my mind, the birds that seem to enjoy singing the most. An ecstatic warble and very sweet and full of cheer are two typoical descriptions fo the house finch's song.



So, anyway, I'll be playing a song on the guitar--either Skip James's Special Rider Blues or Fahey's Poor Boy Long Ways From Home--and this house finch in the back of my building will start singing when I'm playing either song, or, more especially, when I play the turn around in the former or go to the V in the latter. Note that I have to be in the groove and really playing the melody for this to happen.

But it does happen. It's not like the bird is keeping time or we're swinging to the same beat but all the same, between what I play and he sings, there is this connection. Something fits the two together.

The only other natural world thing that happens when I play guitar outside is when I play bottleneck. I put that slide to the strings and every dog on the property starts barking. That is not quite so sastisfying or edifying an experience. but what can ya do ?

Anyway, with the house finch singing when I play guitar, it happened last week and it happened again last night. I thought it was a coincidence the first time but when it happened the second time, I would get to the phrase or riff that seemed to trigger that bird and I would stay there, play it over and over... and that bird will sing and sing and just cut loose for the length of more than a few bars as I stay on the phrase. It is so cool.

Not anything earthshakingly profound but, all the same, it comes as if it were a gift and a blessing from the god of small things. It's like a mystical experience, with a lower case 'm' and in a very small font. It really is soemthing very sweet to experience--it really does make my day...

And there it is. That's my story du jour. Just thought I 'd share.

nice...

Mozart felt the same way. (MIDI link)

That's beautiful, y2karl!

That is so damn cool.

Lovely story. I wish you could record a session like that and let us hear...

great story y2karl! made me smile.