the keys

The keys are within you; you need only to find them.

your word of the day

It's all about passion, boys and girls. And being passionate. Finding that passion for that particular thing -- whatever it is for you -- and holding on it. Feeding it.

That is all.

*

The three visual artists I was ever real friendly with (2 guys I used to run with and 1 girl who broke my heart all to pieces) were all kind of ruthless characters. Brilliant, charming and ruthless. Fucking Capricorns all. Probably not, but it sounds better that way. I speak to none of them now. I like to find them online though, from time to time, to see what they're up to (they're all still in the game, big time). Creepy, right? And pathetic. Taboo even, in a certain sense. I still admire them all, but I think it's very likely that all of them think rather poorly of me -- if they even think of me at all. For various reasons and causes that I'm not real proud of. The one guy, a sculptor, I'm afraid he might think I owe him money, back from a deposit on an apartment we once held (which in fact I might, but I mean... hell); the other guy, the abstract expressionist (but also a hell of a draftsman and also a hell of an opportunist), I was friendly with at that particular point in time when I went batshit crazy for a few days and some ugly drama ensued; the girl who aspires to paint like this guy, well, I tried to give her those paintings back, she insisted I keep them out of some misplaced sense vanity, and I subsequently wrecked 'em in a drunken fit of rage and self-immolating despair. Then told her all about it. Nice guy, huh? For all of that, we parted on better terms than could have been expected, but then a few years later I drunk dialed her a couple of times, and for that I am ashamed because it is LAME.

But to hell with all that. What guy aint done that a time or two? (If you say it's you, I say you're lyin'.)

the word

1:49 pm

You need to think about this every day: that the word is what you're involved in, is what's paying the bills. And so it should pay the bills.

No matter what happens, your involvement with the word is key. Will be key.

The word has distinguished many a song. Never forget that.

*

It is an Alvarez Regent dreadnaught that I bought from a guy around here for $55. He had it advertised on craigslist last Friday along with a bunch of other guitars and parts of guitars and other junk.

Now, the first decent acoustic guitar I ever owned was an Alvarez. I think I must have traded it away eventually toward a better guitar. But I always liked that first guitar, even though the nut eventually came to buzz.

The guitar I got Friday has been put back together better than perhaps it first was, or so I like to think. The guy could certainly have sold it for more than he did. He could have asked more for it; but, that he didn't was part of the charm of the whole thing, the whole arrangement. It all seemed, as they say, meant to be.

The key thing is, these old Alvarez models have solid spruce tops and real rosewood fretboards. This is a big deal. A crack in the top of the guitar has been meticulously repaired (you can hardly see where); and the heel of the neck finely cut and re-glued.

The fucking thing has .012's on it and has had for over a month, according to the guy, and it seems solid as a rock. It's not a piece of junk; it's a real instrument, albeit a cheap one. And everyone's gotta have at least one cheap one, a beater. There is a certain charm to the cheap ones, a certain ineffable charm. Because if you can make it all sound real and right on cheap one, well, then you know you're onto something.

Yeah, it's my beater. But I could tell right away, in that way that you always can, from the very first E played, that the thing had some song in it. It's also my lone 6-string acoustic at this point. And I'm hanging on to it. I'm taking it camping next month, sure. Also, it means I can work on getting me fingerstyle chops together. Also, now I don't feel so antsy to spend 3x as much on a brand new cheap guitar. Oh no: I'd like the next 6-string I get to be a good one. A real good one. Like this one. Till then…

*

But I'm fucking kicking myself for ever selling off that old Taylor. How could I have? But I sure did. Because I quit, I fucking quit for years, I gave up, gave it all up, gave everything up, resigned, became resigned, gave in to my own complacency, chickened out, backed out, shut it down, shut it away.

And now I'm back.

And that is the great lesson: that you can come back, you can bring it back, you can bring yourself back, you can rise anew, you can return more powerfully than anyone could have ever imagined.

Like he said.

*

When I walked up to the dude's house last Friday eve, the dude with the guitar, the living room was pungent with the scent of incense, like he'd just smoked a fattie.

Too bad he didn't know exactly who he was dealing with. I'd have brought a six-pack of Coronas or fifty extra dollars, or what have you.

But I aint that lucky. Or at least, I wasn't.

stringent

9:27 am

It's hard. You've really got to be clinical in the way you choose to administer the discipline. Now that makes a lot of sense. I want to come in here and start writing right away, just to sort out my thoughts. It only took about 7 years to figure out that the Internet is for shit, just like TV. Except at least it can be read. No, see. It's just another tool. Like the man said, it's in the way that you use it.

It seems like there must be a perfect series of moves, that if I could just make the right ones, unerring, no false steps, maybe I could get to where I want to be. You have to be stringent in your administration of discipline. Maybe that's why I'm here. Maybe it's that I need to learn that lesson, learn it and hold it once and for all, before I'm able to advance.

un poco triste

Today I feel a burden
of regret over
past apathy.

A gnawing awareness
of every day
I've wasted.

We live in dark times.
We crave absolution.
We craft dark rhymes.

The Devil will account
for every malefactor,
great and small.
 
The best
you can do
is whatever  

you can do
to keep a sense
of hope alive.

We live in dark times.
We crave absolution.
We craft dark rhymes.

galaxies galore

11:19 am

what a morning, a tremendous morning, a tremendous tremendous morning

I don't want to explain it all at all, I don't want to jinx it. But of course there is no jinxing, just like there is no spoon harhar. Having to come into Work is kind of jinxy but not really the key is to stay grounded and realize that everything is indeed arranged just so and you just go with that

But remember you're just writing this in Word it's not like it absolutely must go up on the fucking blog, so write whatever, and that of course is another key. The other key is

(I have it all mapped out in my mind)

You know, in the last analysis you end up defining for yourself what it will be to "make it" and for me all it's going to involve at this point is my little analog tape recorder from Radio Shack, the old fashioned kind, notebooks and pens, my beat up old laptop used exclusively for Word, my Yamaha 12-string and my good old grey '87 Strat.

The thing about Strats is they get better with age, they really do, they really really do.

(Guitar. What a word. My favorite word. Aw yeah, babe.)

If I can write 'em all as fast as I wrote the one I wrote this morning they are going to pile up fast buddy and the riff for this one is really something that just came from a chord progression I was playing purely to practice switching clean and crisp from barre chords to open chords letting every note ring pure how lame is that but there it was. Then I came up with a line that the cyborg would speak and took it from there. Aw yeah babe.

Not going to divulge lyrics here. That was the great mistake of Maught Braughmby, in a certain sense. Wasting those kinda bullets in blogland is a big no-no. Blogs are for stupid self-referential bullshit. Never forget that.

So, roughed out probably around 15 verses. And just go from there. It's the Beizart thing but I'm a re-tool it all as I go. Making it up as I go. If I think too much about this I'll begin to have a(nother) nervous fucking breakdown. So: a little each day.

(Yeah, buddy. These are the Lessons. Put one foot in front of the other. And soon you'll be walkin' out the door. Aw yeah babe)

So anyway I came up with the riff and recorded it and then sang it, and I can't lie, it is pretty good.

Actually, it is the fucking Deal, baby.

But. The key being, you gotta keep going. Like the man said, way back in the day at some student art exhibition, The real shame of it is that he didn't make 50 more of 'em, just like this.

**

But golly, I could get a lot more done if I didn't drink at night while doing it. Stick to beer and sip slow, I guess. I start drinking that fucking Pinot and next thing I know I've just drunk a whole big bottle. Except: I won't lie, last night I really meant to, I really just felt like getting fucking ripped.

Great, great.

And so on another note: I finally figured out that memorizing the lyrics to the ole cover songs while driving in the truck is the way to take it. Because not knowing the words is a Major Problem. Because the other thing is, you really do, you really really do at some level have to be The Human Jukebox. As long, of course, that you're playing songs that you like. Because otherwise, as the sage must know, it aint really workin'.

And there are a veritable houseload of good cheesy songs out there for to play in bars and such, a veritable houseload. Because, at long last, playing out as much as much as is possible (an admitted known unknown) for $ is the next step, purely because I would like to be makin' more money for to buy more instruments, a good digital recorder, a killer amp, etc. See, and talking like this is what makes me nervous; it veers toward the territory of Wanting The Wrong Things. The key of course being to do what you can do, to do it Now, and to eschew trying to rig your shit up with preconceptions, preconceived notions: a strange turn of phrase, that, but there it is.

And I think you know what I mean.

But, nonetheless, I'll be damned if I don't do this thing. One or two fucking gigs is all I'm talking about. I've got a few local places in mind. Have to hit their open mikes first, and will have to, you know, kill. Which is not necessarily easier said than done; thing is, you can't be terminally under-rehearsed, as I often was, back when I was Being Stupid. As I may have mentioned.

 Anyway, I aint gonna lie and say I'm not kinda skeered and uncertain as to how exactly it's all going to go. This shit sure aint getting done all by itself is all I know. 'Cause you know, you've first got to apprehend the songs and acquire a certain foundation of technique, and rightexactlynow I haven't quite done either, and I can't quite say how long it's going take before I'm really truly ready. After all, I've only been back in zee black for about a month here, got to remember that, got to keep remembering that. I'm still way deep in the Woodshed here, but it's getting more interesting by the day. A lot more interesting. As the strengths build and the skills coalesce, it gets more interesting. By exercising it every day you exude your own metaphysical paraffin, sweating it out like lamp oil, which you then burn; endeavor to coruscate, in some small measure, and then you go back and fucking burn it some more until it won't stop glowing

Aw yeah babe. That is exactly what you do

**

Er, yeah.

**

Got to get back on task here but at least I got this mental and emotional party train back rolling and, like the ballplayers say, untracked, now

**

Also this morning, after roughing out the cyborg's (first) song, I realized that the problem with one of the other ones (Stump Sprouts, if you must know) was that I've been playing it way way way too slow. Crash along with it fast and with a muted sense of smoldering mingled with the regret and voila there it is. Or at least, there the shape of it is.

The neighbors must think I'm a fuckin' flake, and good God, what if I am. A man lives in a house for nearly 5 years and then one day Boom all he's ever doing is playing acoustic and electric guitars, playing harmonica, singing. Carrying on like a fuckin' Teen Ager. But you see, that's the key: to attack it every day like you did when you was aged, say, thirteen fourteen fifteen and sixteen, except, and here's the catch: Knowing What You Know Now.

(And there you have it, friends and neighbors, The Secret To Being A Real Artist. Tell 'em you heard it here over it File 313; but then, if you're one of the three out there who might be reading this, you prob'ly don't need me to tell you. Bat, for sure, I know you don't.

And so much for all that; that's the gyp and the paradox and the irony of it all…why, it's a gyparadoxirony…harhar, I got a million of em folks a million of 'em I tell ya a million)

Whatever, at least I'm singing kinda low, not caterwauling like some emotional wreck like back in the old days, oh no.

(Also not screaming and howling no more at walls and worse in a rage of brutal self-abnegation and lost lonesome despair. Which I have done my fair share of over the past, oh, 5 – 6 years, because I'd Quit Playing, all because I'd been Wanting The Wrong Things. And Hadn't Figured That Out. But then we've already covered that particular angle. No sense going backward too too much here. Oh no no no)

(Yet, my only hope for any of these boring ridiculouso rants is that they're somehow therapeutic in a way that's Necessary For Me…good grief…)

Or maybe the neighbors can't really hear and don't care. I will and do shut the windows when I think it's getting too ridiculous.

But hear this: a man should sing low and cool; that's just the way it has to be; the faster you learn that, the faster you'll obtain, sonnyboy, the faster you'll obtain, the faster you'll obtain.

 

**

Er, yeaaaaaaaaah. Say, it's feelin kinda jinxy in here, Maughx; you're really giving all all all away here, aintchee, a bit too much in the telling. But then, fuck it, you know I don't stop, I don't want to stop, I just wanna keep on going

And you are not helping the cause nor the plan one bit by going on and on and on here while other more mundane yet nevertheless vital and workmanlike tasks awaitchee.

Do your chores first, then you can play.

It is ever the story.

**

3:34 pm

Woah I really hesitate to post all this crap because I feel it is LAME at a very fundamental level. But will post in the interest of moving right along and why the F not. It's blogland, baby, so show the folks yer ass with aplomb; it'll all be gone by Sunday anyway.

Let it be a lesson to me not to be such a tool.

**

I know some people like to disparage that myspace music but I think at a certain level it's pretty decent as a way at least to hear what everyone doing. Big news flash, I know.

It's been opening up my horizons at least.

Galaxies and galaxies, baby, galaxies and galaxies and galaxies galore.

discipline

10:00 am

Unstinting in each now. Is how you’ve got to be.

Sitting here in cube, ugh. But. I am going to get my mundane shit done now.

Fuck that Internet. I tire of it. The sage is strategic in his use of it. And I have a plan.

And if I can implement that plan, I will have a stack of lyrics by the time that I’m really ready to bring ‘em out.

(shed that cladding, the useless past. or is it the opposite)

(whispering sense of embedded meta-doom)

But here’s this, though: it’s a hell of a lot easier to write, period, kid, a hell of a lot easier, now that I’m not charging myself with being That Kind Of Writer.

I mean, sweet Jesus, the idea of writing novels, and not just novels, but in the end, novels in verse, about mythical failed guitar players. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Writing about making music is a lot like writing about having sex. Boring!

So then: I’m gonna try to avoid getting into the particulars of daily practice, because I think it detracts from what I’m about. But what I can tell you is that I’m focused on technique, real technique, now, in a way that I wasn’t before and haven’t been heretofore. And part of that sure is coming from being confined to practicing acoustic on a 12-string, because that instrument is in a lot of ways twice as demanding. And that cheap Yamaha sounds better than you might think.

But then, that’s the way it is with guitars and guitar playing. Requiring a subtle kind of precision and an almost effortless kind of strength, you want to be deft fluid firm precise

Er, right.

Yeah. So that’s why I’m going to have to go back to GC one of these days and check that $200 six-string Yamaha. Because I think there might’ve been something to that cheap mother.

And it’s good thing I haven’t bought another expensive guitar yet anyway because I’m not sure at this point what exactly it is that I’m going to be wanting. There’s a vintage music store out in the western part of the state that, for instance, has a 12-string Guild that is The Deal, and you know, something like that might really end up being the thing for me. Because, shit, 12-strings are the deal but they are a lot harder to play well; but then, that’s what I’m presently about through a kind of chance and happenstance.

Uh, right.

But see, getting your wire and wood skills together after a long long layoff - not to say a nearly terminal layoff - well, getting it all back and then some via the exclusive acoustic use of the 12-string is one the best things a motherfucker can do. Because you’ve got to be stronger, better, faster, more precise. And then, when you take that back to playing, say, your Stratocaster (which I do), then you see just how much farther along you’re getting in terms of being A Monster On The Electric. Because, let’s face it, Rock Music, baby. You know, that element. Hardcore troubadour and all like that. That is The Deal.

(a certain mad scientist ethic, believin in things only I can see)

Because at this point, for me, not being All The Guitarist I Can Be is definitely not gonna cut it. And that idea quickly leads one into this head of, committing to a lifeling pursuit of the mastery of the guitartial arts, sort of thing. Which you clearly need anyway, no matter what happens, because there’s a hell of a lot of good guitar players out there, a hell of a lot of them, who will always be better than you. A lot better.

(This is all foolish bullshit, Maught Procrastination.

Stream of consciousness is all the media feed I need. Seriously, fuck surfing the Internet. A Caucasoid gotta be strategic in his use of it.)

OK, fuck it, get to work.

*

3:02 pm

Discipline.

With any, I could eventually score that whole stupid fucking Jacob Beizart thing, all of it. The fucking robot, the fucking humanoid, all of it. Complete with ambient noise and guitar solos. All of it.

And I just may.