woodshed within yourself

What I can tell you is that I'm deep in the woodshed again for the first time in a long time.

One other time was the winter and spring of '95 in the Midwest in a 7th floor dorm room and an acoustically inviting stairwell, where I sat on the stairs and picked and strummed and sang and everyone else be damned. No one seemed to mind.

During the subsequent summer months, the woodshed shifted to a second floor shotgun apartment above a convenience store and a bar in northern New England, right across the street from a coastal river.

That period of woodshedding mainly ended when I decided to move back to the Midwest at the end of the summer, after which my life got way too desperate and morose and complicated. By the end of that year I'd run off the rails down South only to end up back in New England for all of '97, my musical pursuits all in a shambles. A fucking shambles like my life at that point. So it seemed; in many ways it surely was. I can remember feeling like a huge fucking failure at everything I'd tried, and so I was.

Another time in the woodshed (it occurs to me now) was for a few months at the end of '97, when I'd been going to the gym and lost a bunch of weight prior to moving to New York City, a move made about 2 days before New Year's. Making a living in that fucking city was nearly impossible for me and my playing at this time was largely a by-product of my drinking and carrying on like a fuckup.

Back then I was always putting the cart before the horse, never really taking the time to hone my skills. Never making that vital commitment to daily practice which is what drives it all. Always stepping too far, too far ahead of myself, premature. Wanting the wrong things. Though I played with a certain energy, I was indeed at that time a very sloppy fucking guitar player and singer. Uneven at best, a total suckjob at worst.

It's hard to write about it and it's hard not to write about it, but that I am at all right now tells me something.

When I stop playing, I go dormant. It's not like I'm looking back with regrets because it's my past and I can't change it but right now I want more. And I'm prepared to have more.

What it comes down to, if it involves the arts, is that you can only expect to excel at the medium that's easiest for you to stay up all night doing -- whatever it is puts you outside of time, entranced and in focus. For me it involves the guitar and, in symbiosis, typing at the keyboard; but the guitar is the main thing, the momentum, the bloom, the chemistry, the blood.

***

[Then there's a part here where I lecture about how a "day job" need not be a soul sucker. Not a bit. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just has to be the right job and you have to know how to work it. But fuck all that.]

***

Good God, the temperature is in the 80s today under lucid skies and a high golden sun. All the trees finally coming out, flowering.

Good God, I just went down to Guitar Center to play the acoustics since with their yearlong interest free financing I realize I can afford to get a decent one i.e. one priced more than a grand and holy shit it was a Taylor that grabbed me. Only thing is, my old acoustic was also a Taylor and I sold it a year ago on the basis of (as I told the people closest to me) my "just not liking it."

(There was, I should mention, quite a bit of truth in that assessment. I never did like that particular guitar. Chemistry with guitars is a funny thing. Just like with people.)

My plan at that time was to buy an expensive laptop computer for My Writing harhar. I sold the fucking Taylor to some kid for $700, then frittered away 3/4 of the money while ostensibly "saving" for the laptop, and finally ended up buying my present 12-string acoustic for $279 (it must be said: a killer ax for the money; a vital ax for me as it turns out and one I won't part with willingly), because not having an any acoustic whatsoever was way too depressing.

But a year ago I wasn't in the woodshed. It was all pre-epiphany. I was still conflicted about the whys and the wherefores of playing. Still wanting the wrong things. Still lost.

Anyway, I can only imagine what they'll say if/when they find out that here we are a year later and I'm into another $1500 fucking Taylor guitar. They'll think it's pretty fucking flaky is what they'll think.

But to hell with all that. I'm pretty much keeping this whole thing on the deep downlow anyway because it's just in people's nature to consider it all a pretty fucking fruity business, this business of playing and singing.

Let 'em figure it out if and when I ever get this fucking thing rolling the way I want to, this time around.

My head's right this time, is all that matters. Other than the work, you know.

(Good God, I hope it is indeed only you, Bat, who really knows who the masked man is here. Talk is cheap and ambition ugly. The difference for me this time that I'm working within a certain scope.

Like the ballplayers say: stay within yourself.)