May 1993

Geetar Time

A melodious sundown on the patio of the old adobe...

Ol' mister geetar has been good company - my fingers are seriously calloused and respectable looking - and my playing, well shit I've only been at it a couple of months - but I've come a long way since I was in the living room with you. I can get through Angie and play the first many bars at full speed. I'm actually learning names of chords and my fingers can find them fairly quickly - and I'm getting clean sounding "F's". Turns out that down here they name the chords different names - do, re, mi, fa, so... I don't know which is which but I don't suppose it would be hard to learn. I can walk through the first song in "Blues Solos", "Return to Little Rock" - I still trip a bit with it. And Damn! Have you played with the slide yet - I tuned down to open D - and is it sweet to play - so easy you can't hit a wrong string and then you throw the slide on - hot damn!

I spent an hour today on my patio sliding up and down those strings while the sun slid on the sky - slid so hard it disappeared. I even had a dog at my feet, the dog next door. I scratched his ears between licks and he licked his toes between scratches. A good scene, fine as it gets, when I really love where I am and how life feels.

Turns out Mexico isn't such a savage country after all - you can get steel strings here. I've already snapped my high E and G strings. There is an old blind man who plays in the plaza while his daughter goes around and collects change in a cup. He plays sweet minor key romantic mexican songs from the old days. I like to imagine myself learning from him. As I get better I may find the courage to approach him and ask him to teach me. I suppose with a few dollars he'd be thrilled - and so would I.

Oh, all the possibilities of life - the trick is having the guts to do them.

Home	Traditions Mexico Tours	Talk to Us