my strings, let me show you them

he likes to wear a guitar with a strap swirling around the shoulder and neckline, because it draws a direct and hard line between the proximity of his mind and the focus at which it aims. mental target practice, music; at least the rudiments. the faculties of the head are close to us, our consciousness....sight and smell are precise, discerning. the brush of the cheek and lips are practically buzzing with nerves; a loaded weapon waiting, itching to feel itself be fired. the further away, the more clumsy the senses get...hands can be trained, but cannot candle to, say, the intricacies of the tongue. the hands are ripe with utility, but they falter in that they absorb the finer points, mashing them into a singularity. further down are the feet, so removed from our mindstate that we would not normally consider to feel with them. they remain clumsy and relatively useless for anything other than their narrow purpose. no offense feet.

the strap tethers the mind and the hands, though; webs them and brings a focal directness and understanding between them. the mind tops the pyramid, which untapers down into two triangular shared sides, the body and the instrument. it brings a geometrical understanding, a simple assimilation that cradles the instrument as if it were a new archaeological discovery, fitting into the pieces of human history, filling a gap that has been void for far too long in our both sweetly short and exhaustibly dense genealogy. most people don't consider the strap, but it mobilizes. it makes accessory into effortless, alli into aqui, with an urgent note of immediacy.

myriad strings of varying substances likely creating a unique sound as they brush along fingerprints, but one would be hard-pressed to capture that differential within our unrefined hearings. more tangible are the inflections, the rhythms, the negative-spaces which are employed in the distances between notes. the beat, the swing, the slides and hammers and controlled spasms of the hand tensing on the frets. the nearly-chalkboard scrape of transposition. frets. an oddly-named partition of the instrument; it makes it seem as though anxiety were the only thing spurring a musician on from one chord to another. perhaps not so far from the truth~ anyone can play a scale, give them five minutes to learn. done and done. it takes a special kind of, abandon, however, to exist within one.

resumed. guitar is another one of those things; there is a natural propensity for it but it also spirals deeper in terms of effort (much work must be undertaken in order to really justify calling oneself a 'musician'....do not toss such words lightly). there is always another tier just beyond grasp, so ask any of us and you will watch us discredit our own achievements, eyes forever forward as they must be in order to achieve, to mystify, to transcend the current impression of what something is and of what we are capable of. good music is patient, humble, flabbergasted at its own existence and completely content with exploring its reaches. there will always be someone better if you think in terms of betters. so don't; chances are it won't get you where you want to be. and if it does, it's going to be a very lonely place when you finally arrive.
does that make any sense?

"now life's only pleasures is digging, i do it often; so when i die, don't cry, put my records in a coffin and bury me next to a very big tree, with my MPC."
~ Double K