Practice

With all the time we’ve had off lately I’ve been trying to focus on the baby and the love I’ve always had for the guitar. Almost every day I give Levi a twenty minute private concert and I play a lot in the evenings when he’s sleeping. He’s literally a captive audience in his crib! He’s only cried once. That was the time I broke into “Positively 4th Street” by Bob Dylan. I played a verse. He cried so I stopped. Just to see if it was a fluke I played it again. He cried. Tried it one more time. He cried once more. So I switched to something else and he was all smiles. There’s either something about that song, or my version of the song that he really doesn’t like. Maybe it’s the C# minor that kind of comes out of nowhere after the C major. He does love “Don’t Think Twice” though so if I ever meet Bob Dylan I’ll mention that, not the other.

But getting back to practice, it’s supposed to be fun and it has been lately. Wayne Gretzky apparently loved practicing. It shouldn’t feel like work. If it does maybe it’s time to develop a new  pastime. It’s fun to play music with and without an audience. My older brother showed me a simple blues progression when i was 10 or so, and my awesome camp counsellor Ed (who I’ve recently found on Facebook) introduced me to Rocky Racoon at summer camp on Vancouver Island when I was 11. I played it over and over and over….And it went from there. I’ve always had a guitar nearby or in my hands. Never really got great, but good enough to express myself. There’s still much, much, much more to learn. Plenty of room left for improvement that’s for sure. Lots of songs left to play. Songs to write. Songs to finish…

Years ago I remember an old English prof telling our class that it was a sad day the day he realized he won’t be on the planet long enough to read all the books he would like to read. It’s kind of the same with music.