odd sound

[bouzouki]

It is funny how our paths might cross, or flow together like mountain streams make rivers
We see a face passing by, a question, answered, echoed from up high, glimmers in the crystal silence
Some dance beside us until we flow into the boundless sea
While others, sipped like special wine, and in a moment, gone...
So far, the snow leaves remnants of winter's fury, and the sun awoke summer's heat,
In this mountain space where we might meet again, you and I
Vibrating upon a plucked metal string into infinity

[bouzouki]

I have been thinking about synchronicity today, different than synesthesia, although both are quite interesting.  One is an acausal connecting principle, and the the other is the experience or sensing from a different sense organ, like tasting color, or seeing sound.  In both cases, there is a change in the way that we perceive the world.  I'm all for changing the world in whatever way that would give us a new paradigm to hang on, a new sky hook.  I saw the International Space Station go by a few nights ago, so i waved, but I don't think anyone up there saw me.  These days, I wonder if anybody is looking from the ground.  I hope that our energies are not so trapped by our civilized thoughts that we lose imagination.  A friend is coming over to PLAY music.  When we play, there is a limited game plan, usually starting with a note or two, or maybe a whole chord, and it is like tasting a huge feast.  We shift on a dime, spinning further and furthur, until it is time to stop.  The odd part is that we are given these moments to savor, then events keep us from playing again for six months or so.  It is almost like the energies are too great to allow us much time together.  A moment of bliss is more than most humans get to experience, and two moments are almost heaven, and an hour, like shooting across the sky in a space station is just imagination.  I think of it as an odd sound, because not everyone that hears it, knows what it is, and for all of you that know that sound, you know how special it is ....

 Listening to:  thunder

[Cindy Lou]

Kinda like the recordings Grisman did with Jerry and Tony.  Just friends playing around when they could, having a good ol' time, but boy oh boy I'm glad he was recording.  If he hadn't, we wouldn't have the Pizza Tapes and others!

[bouzouki]

 
Feels like a long time since I heard that odd sound.  It is strange what each of us considers important.  here, in this group, the plucked string might be more important than our collective cooked goose.  I can't say for sure, but I know where my priorities are, even without someone telling where to spend most of my time (work).  I am listening to "Potter's Field" by Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, a sentiment I share at this time.
i look around this world and wonder how the story is being written. 
I sat in sandstone rock a few days ago, and noticed the rocks haven't changed much since my childhood, so what is with our human culture? 
I'll admit I am a creature of magic as much as logic, if any of you can tell if you have crossed my path, which many of you have, memory or not.  I think my magic doesn't care about cash, as long as there is enough for two tickets with camping.  I asked for magic last summer, and it happened, never in the way we think it should, or might, but that is the nature of magic, it is unexpected. 
I have been listening to a random mix of music and the songs have touched me in ways that give me a different feel than seeing the live music on the solstice.  Music is magic to me and the odd sound is how it reaches inside, slipping through my defenses and giving me a taste of the sublime, and it is the unexpected.

 Listening to: Elvis Costello, Niko Case, Dave Alvin

[landshark]

 Music is magic to me and the odd sound is how it reaches inside, slipping through my defenses and giving me a taste of the sublime, and it is the unexpected.

Dan you are a river of beautiful words.......

[bouzouki]

I haven't listened to my records, (LP's, not CD's) for too long.  I found Leon Russell with New Grass Revival, Live.  What a find.  i have been digging into Weather Report, Miles Davis, and I found( not a record, but a CD,) Yip sing Harburg....You may remember two or more of his songs, "Brother, can you spare a Dime", and "Somewhere over the Rainbow".  If you haven't heard either, your focus is too narrow.  Maybe I need to had a Strange View as well.  The world is still insane, I notice.  So, we need more music, and love, but maybe that is in short supply in the world today.  I guess we should generate that love energy and maybe add a huge dose of laughter.    I find myself to be at odds with so many people that want their opinion to be the truth, forgetting that opinions rarely even deal with weightier matters than that movie is good, or "I don't like vegetables", or i believe that my view of the world is based on reality, or at least the reality that I see.  i am creeping up on the solstice of winter, seeking the essence of beauty in the nighttime sky, looking at houses covered in lights, and hunting for a hot buttered rum.  The view I love best at this time of year is the fire dancing in my wood stove as the sun disappears.  I think I will find Doc Watson records and Steve Grossman, and a bunch of things that I would never find on a cd.  so, for now, I'll watch a movie, listen to music I haven't heard for years, like Barefoot Jerry, and sip something like Bushmills, in the winter twilight.

[bouzouki]

hoar frost covers every tree this morning and the cloud of fog makes it hard to believe there will be sun today.  The inversion will make it look like a smoggy city here and with snow on the ground, it will stay like this for a month.  It gives me time to hunt through my old records, and find Bela's first LP, Tony Rice, Doc, Jerry Douglas, John Fahey, John
Renborn, David Grisman,  and other surprises.  I am bound to find bootlegs, blues, rock and jazz, many that will never be on cd's, or mp3.  I wonder if I will remember the pops and snaps from old, worn albums that are hidden presently, but with it cold outside, every 15 minutes I will get up and exercise my way to change the music.  Maybe I could go from A to Z a few times.   what I need to do while I listen is to restore order to the stacks, so I can find what I want.  Here goes!

 Listening to: What's that Doug Dillard band

[landshark]

Sounds like a perfect way to spend a weekend.

I sealed all my old records in the wall, when we remodeled, as a time capsual....
Glad we are going to tear this place down so I can get them back

I have a new Gerard Turntable stored away, but no cartridge..... I wonder if I can still find em?

Treasures Dan, each one. Kinda like us cowboy

[bouzouki]

there are places where you can find turntable parts, I am sure on the eastern slope.  I am amazed at the joy of finding records that I haven't heard for years.  There are albums that I will listen to for the special pops and crackles that are different than the CD's when they make funny noises.

[landshark]

there are places where you can find turntable parts, I am sure on the eastern slope.  I am amazed at the joy of finding records that I haven't heard for years.  There are albums that I will listen to for the special pops and crackles that are different than the CD's when they make funny noises.

Those pops and crackle are what makes it real. Like listening in a time capsual. Wish I had a Victrola and 75's, jumpin jive, etc.

[bouzouki]

A friend of mine told me about going to an audiophile convention, where all these people hunt for sound machines that extend beyond human hearing, and cost lots of money.  I think there are times when we go too far.  To have a sound system that costs thousands of dollars is like going to concerts and talking through the music, complaining the band isn't as good as at the previous concert, or calling someone on your cell, to complain that the music is too loud to be able to hear.  Sometimes I think humans are too pretentious, but if I have a chance to listen to my musical heros, I'll do what I can to be there.

 Listening to: John Hartford

[landshark]

A friend of mine told me about going to an audiophile convention, where all these people hunt for sound machines that extend beyond human hearing, and cost lots of money.  I think there are times when we go too far.  To have a sound system that costs thousands of dollars is like going to concerts and talking through the music, complaining the band isn't as good as at the previous concert, or calling someone on your cell, to complain that the music is too loud to be able to hear.  Sometimes I think humans are too pretentious, but if I have a chance to listen to my musical heros, I'll do what I can to be there.

My funny friend Chuck used to collect records  for his Victrolla on Saturdays. We would shop and then open them all up and play them for the entire day... Is it 75's they use?

Cab Callaway, Big Band stuff and lots of jumpin jive.

 Victrollas are beautiful and a part of listening history.

[bouzouki]

I hope to have a new hole drilled and plugged in my head by TBF.  If it is working, I will be a cyborg, I suppose. It will have digital sound and will ring in the bones of my head, I hope it will mean I can hear in stereo again.
As a musician, I feared for my fingers, never knowing that the most important biological tool is the ear.
"You don't know what you've got 'til its gone..."
Each of us has a story that moves, slow or fast, creating context, hanging our old shirts on the hook of our history.  There are places we get to know over time that have the feel and comfort of home.  TBF has given me moments that reside in my head, even though most of the moments are a blur of sight and sound, a mandala, if seen from the road that starts near the museum and goes up the canyon wall.  The mandala moves as a thousand feet, step toward a place, wither to sit, dance, go eat, hunt for friends, head to town, or camp, or to the vendors, weaving with the flow, against the flow, with a friend, or family, or without reason, no place to go, but for the beat that drives the feet.  Your eyes, fed images of faces, of mountains, places you may never go, up high near the horizon of where earth meets sky, rioting color, and red rock and trees, a breeze dancing with the music, and I can feel it now.
Although I look outside, seeing piles of snow, and hoping the solstice is warmer by far than this day, although its okay as days go.

[landshark]

A river of beautiful................. yes I can feel it now.

[bouzouki]

I figure that I can scream from this tiny screen that people can choose or not, to see.  i have decided that, due to all those years of sunburn, rain, snow and wind, and the ultimate beauty of TBF, I can yell, in my quiet way, by the time I arrive on warner field, I will be able to hear stereophonically. For the vast majority of humankind, that is a given, but in my very unique case, I will be able to hear in my left ear.  I will be a cyborg and I hope I have extra batteries in my sweaty hand to reconnect me to my bone-grafted hearing device.  I will forever (only as long as my body breathes) be in debt to the universal entity that oversees this tiny entity, or, maybe there are connections upon connections that open this door to allow me to come to TBF and be able to hear through both sides of my head.  I intend to enjoy it so much that I will go to folks festival and listen to all those words set to music.  I wish that I could go to song school, but, I'll be dancing on rainbows for the next five years or so.  And if none of you understand this, its like getting a plate of food in Haiti, today.