I logged out of my Twitter account on New Year’s Eve and so far have not logged in again, except to check a couple of notifications. I haven’t felt any sense of loss or any overwhelming need to see what I’m missing.
This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, although it is the first voluntary occasion: when we were in China in February 2013 I couldn’t access either Twitter or Facebook, and it was the latter’s absence I most felt. I don’t plan to delete my Twitter account–it has its uses–but I want to get out of the habit of checking it all the time.
In the very early seventies, say 1970 to ’72, our local cinema in East Kilbride used to do Saturday morning children’s matinees. These would usually be a Tom and Jerry cartoon or three, a Warner Bros. cartoon (or Disney if we were unlucky), something from the Children’s Film Foundation, and an episode of Flash Gordon. I used to go along every Saturday before stopping off on the way home to buy an Airfix kit and a copy of Look-in.
I was 18 when Star Wars was released and, like everyone else, saw it lots of times. I always liked to get a seat in the middle of the cinema for that moment when the fighters swoop down into the “canyon” on the Death Star, enjoying the vertigo rush. Star Wars, more than any of the others in the series, reminded me of those children’s matinees; not just for the obvious shout outs to Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, but also the tropes lifted wholesale from Tarzan and Robin Hood.
Now I’m 56 and The Force Awakens rekindled that feeling for me in a way that the others in the series didn’t. I even enjoyed the 3D, which I’m usually not fussed by. And we went see it again on Boxing Day.
If anything, I enjoyed it even more the second time through.
I’ve seen a lot of criticisms of elements of the film, and social media is awash with theories about mysteries left hanging. This is all reminiscent of the buzz around the initial movies, except we didn’t have social media then. Although I’ve dipped into these, and agree intellectually with some of the criticisms I’ve heard, in the end I don’t care. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if I see it again in the cinema before, inevitably, buying the Blu-ray.
We were through at my sister’s house on 2nd January. These events often (usually) end up as singalongs which serve to remind me how infrequently I play guitars these days. I usually come away with sore fingers on my left hand and the resolve to play more and get back some of the old fluency. My fingers still move to pretty much where I want them to, though not as accurately or as quickly as I would like. The only cure for this is to play more and do something that approximates to practice.
And I’ve actually been doing this. I haven’t tried anything fancy and certainly haven’t played with altered tunings: just tried to pick and strum my way through some easy-to-play tunes to remind my fingers of what they’re supposed to do.
000-15
This isn’t always easy–my fingers want to play as they used too and I have to force them to go back to basics. So no ragtime, no jigs, just straightforward chords and alternating bass picking, and old favourite songs that lead me through the basic changes in nice fat major keys.
I’m lucky with the guitars I’ve got here. When I first started playing I had an instrument with crazy high action and I didn’t know enough about guitars or strings then to make it easy on myself. My old EKO Ranger VI, when I got it around 1975 or so, was a big improvement. In retrospect I wish I’d got a Yamaha for more or less the same price, but there we are. It was on the EKO, that had decent action and a good neck, that I was able to progress to more advanced material than I could do at that time on my original instrument.
When I started work in 1983, one of the first things I did was get a better guitar–an Ovation 1311 that I still have and still play from time to time. It lasted me twenty years until I finally bought a brace of Martins in 2002/3 (I only meant to buy one, but these things happen…) And Martins, well set up and with my preferred string gauges (11-52) are a heck of a lot easier to try and relearn on.
I also have a Fender Gemini acoustic upstairs. I’m not a big fan of Fender acoustics, but this one was £25 in a charity shop window so I won’t complain.
I also seem to be staving off guitar acquisition syndrome effectively. I haven’t been without temptation. I’ve always had a hankering for a decent Gibson acoustic, but have very rarely found such a thing, at least in a price bracket I can afford. I did go into my local dealers and try a Gibson J35 just before Christmas. I’d heard good things about them, but I found it disappointing. All the demos I’ve seen have been amplified in some way, but I found its pure acoustic performance thin and unconvincing. It might have been the strings, but it’s something I’ve experienced with Gibsons before. The only exception was a custom Hummingbird I played once, which sounded like a heavenly choir, but also cost four grand.
Meantime, left hand fingers are nippy until the callouses form again.
Further to my last: after some listening on Spotify, I’ve concluded that I like the Grateful Dead’s albums that are more song based (say from Workingman’s Dead through to Blues for Allah), but don’t really get the extended jams, which don’t do much for me. Mind you, extended jams by just about anyone don’t do much for me. There may be other Dead albums I’d like, but I haven’t heard them yet.
The one that bugs me is Blues For Allah. I bought it on vinyl in the 70s but only played it a couple of times and eventually sold it. Right now it is barely off my cd player. This may be because my original copy had ropey dynamics because of dodgy vinyl quality, whereas the cd remaster is astonishing. Also, of course, I’ve changed in the intervening years.
I’m interested also that, although a lot of attention is paid to Jerry Garcia’s guitar stylings, the real revelation for me is the quality of Phil Lesh’s bass playing, which is consistently excellent.
In the course of listening around, I came across some interesting covers of Dead songs. This one is of Estimated Prophet from Terrapin Station, and is a current favourite:
Something odd has been happening to me lately: something unexpected, troubling almost. After 34 years of indifference I have been listening to the Grateful Dead. I say specifically 34 years because it was in September 1981 that I went to see the Dead play at Edinburgh Playhouse and came away feeling distinctly meh.
The Dead: Edinburgh, September 1981
I have always liked some of their songs, notably Ripple and Truckin’ as well as covers I’ve heard of Friend of the Devil. I also like American Beauty as an album. But overall I’ve always found them too ramshackle and approximate to pay them any mind.
But for some reason I’ve had the opening of Friend of the Devil running through my head as an earworm for a couple of days. To exorcise it, I opened up Wake of the Flood on Spotify, and found myself enjoying it, especially the Weather Report suite.
I still don’t care much for their extended cosmic jams, and I much prefer Jerry Garcia’s bluegrass stuff with Peter Rowan et al, but I’m obviously mellowing in my middle years.
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Kirstin and I had a pleasant walk this afternoon to start the New Year. We didn’t go far–just a round that took us from the house and back for 2.5-3 miles, but it was something I really must do more of this year: 2015 was entirely too desk-bound. In the same spirit, I have been pondering something that Melissa Harrison wrote on Twitter yesterday: “What you do with the days is what you do with the years. What you do with the years is what you do with your life.”
I think that sentiment is correct. Ironically, given where I read it, my first thought is to spend a lot less time checking social media–I haven’t looked at Twitter for 24 hours and am rethinking (again) the ways in which I engage with all my cyber-friends and acquaintances. The trick, I think, is to take Melissa’s aphorism in reverse–work out what I want to do and work backwards.
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