As I get older (and hopefully wiser) I notice things in different ways than I used to. I'm discovering little things about the way I deal with issues, the way my brain works.
For example, the other day I was out working in the garden. Our new place here in Oregon came with a 129' x 37' fenced garden that hasn't been tilled in years. It was weed and grass infested, which we first attacked with a weed-wacker and a lawn mower. Then I rented a roto-tiller to tear up what was left of the weeds and churn up the dirt. Well, the grass and weed roots are so thick that I should've roto-tilled at least one more time around. So now, as I prepare the rows for planting my veggies I'm having to re-till the ground by hand.
The other day I'm out there chopping away at the ground with a shovel and a hoe and rehearsing songs in my head as I work. Since I haven't had an opportunity to play my own original tunes for quite awhile, I'm enjoying doing that at my monthly gig at the winery here. Singing as I work helps me memorize my own lyrics.
And that's the first "write this down" revelation that came to me that day - I need to use repetition to memorize stuff. And maybe that's universal, but some people seem to be able to memorize stuff quickly and retain it. It takes me multiple repetitions of things usually to commit them to memory.
Then I thought I should expand on my mental rehearsal by trying to visualize the guitar chords and picking patterns that I would accompany the song with at the same time I was singing the lyric. I found I couldn't do it. At least not fluidly. Which led me to my second "write this down" revelation: my brain can't think of two things at once. When I play, the guitar part is on auto-pilot apparently, because I really don't think about it on a level that distracts me from my singing.
I realized that I could visualize my guitar playing as long as I didn't impose on my brain with anything else. I found this kind of disappointing for some reason, but luckily, it only affects me when I'm working in the garden.
The other "write this down" revelation I had pertained to how I finger chords on any particular instrument. When I was learning banjo and guitar I learned chord formations and learned which fingers I needed to use to play these chords. On a guitar an open C chord uses 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers. I need the same fingers for D, etc.
Working in the yard the other day I managed to pick up some hitch-kikers in the form of blackberry thorns that went pretty deep into my flesh. One is in my left thumb and the other is in my left middle finger. Both thorns are in areas where those fingers contact the fingerboard or guitar neck on certain chords. I'm not having too much trouble with the thumb thorn - it's not in as critical a spot as the one in my middle finger. When I play any chord that involves the middle finger (there aren't many that don't, according to the way I learned chord fingerings) I press that danged thorn into a nerve that makes my head hit the ceiling.
This has been going on for about three days and getting worse as the thorn is infecting. I've been trying to soak it and dig it out with a needle, but so far it's so deep in my finger that I can't grab it. Today I got so frustrated that I couldn't use that finger, essentially blocking me from playing any instrument except a harmonica or kazoo, I started trying to re-finger chords to eliminate the middle finger. I was slow at finding the best finger to substitute, and I ultimately gave up and sat down to watch TV, but I realized that, worst come to worst, I could learn to do it. Django Reinhardt did it and he had two fingers that he couldn't use.
So bring it on, Life - I can handle anything you throw at me!
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