this is something i'd totally forgotten. whenever i dream of playing music i get incredibly energized. damn, doesn't every guy want to be a rock star? and for one reason: the adulation, the screams, and sighs of women.
when i lived on a greek island in the 60's a friend david helton wrote a novel called king jude. the hero had six fingers on one hand and could play a helluva guitar. and the favors he gained from the fair sex, they made the hair (among other things) of any real man stand on end .
in the early seventies all the young lookouts on my forest gathered once a week to roast corn and play music. i wrote songs. even took a few singing lessons. we drove two or three hours each way for this. one evening i ate some innocent looking cookies. on the way home the road began to wobble. i pulled up by a stream and slept it off.
alas, those convivial days ended. those twenty-something folks grew up, got married, had children, abandoned the hours alone on a mountain. with the ice-cream socials gone (we made our own) i lost my enthusiasm for music. and anytime i've come close to it since, it's presence has created such a fever in me i've had to back off.
okay, cutting to the chase, last nite my body felt full of electric wires. and all this cause i've gotten bored with photographing. what could i do? on an early morning walk through downtown i realized the one art i'd never fully followed up was music. why not give it another try? i couldn't wait for the local music store to open.
i wandered through this strange, long abandoned country populated by guitars and ukuleles. one electric-guitar caught my eye. damned heavy, but cut-away it rested easy on my lap. i felt like bob dylan thumbing his nose at the acoustic crowd. i drifted to a blue luna dolphin ukulele (i gotta tell you, all these instruments made in china like everything else we buy) beautiful to the touch, the sound could be amplified. i thought about it. sailed back to the les paul knock-off.
home, i thought what the hell, i'll look on ebay. before i knew it i'd bought the paul machine for less than half what they asked at the store. then i purchased a roland micro amplifier. by the time i retired i'd included the magix music maker 16 premium software to the musical hoard. boy, i thought, i do like to spend money.
the upshot, i couldn't sleep. and all day today i kinda swaggered, like i'd already topped bruce springsteen. the wonders consumer therapy will do. youtube here i come.
all that said, i have posted more pictures based on our construction site:
www.pbase.com/wwp/site5
and time in the prison library: www.pbase.com/wwp/ls
