24th april 2007 - my busking angel stayed in the bar drinking and chatting up the barmaid leaving me to face the music, or lack of it, alone. usually i can blag my way out of even the trickiest musical situation. but with old feather shoulders verbaling a decidedly disinterested damsel over the cooking lager, last tuesday became yet another disaster at the st james crescent social club sitters in night.
alone? if only i had been. this project obviously still needs a lot more work. once again i couldn't get a handle on my sound and my normal jitters amplified themselves into a kind of shredded emotional pulp. altho the band were very good and not loud i just couldn't hear what i was doing and couldn't find myself again once i had got lost. which i did.
all very embarrassing and a classic 'beam me up scotty' moment. altho i understand that james doohan, the actor who actually played scotty in startrek, recently beamed himself up and had his ashes deposited on infinity's doorstep. ie in space. which would've felt like a pretty good option to me. certainly preferable to standing up with the band.
of course it could be that i haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of getting on top of the instrument. i've always been a feel player more than a technique player. maybe it's just too difficult? especially when you can't see where you are, because the machine's in your mouth, and you can't orientate yourself by your fingering, because there isn't any.
but i don't think i'm going to own any of that just yet. i've come a long way since i bought a hohner chromatic in 2003 and couldn't get anything at all out of the little blighter. trouble is it all takes time. it was the best part of a year before i got tongue blocking sorted. and i still haven't managed to memorise the landscape of the mouthpiece. i guess the question is how much time has one got left anyway. and who can answer that?
so what to do? keep going i suppose. as the spider said to robert the bruce, 'ye'll no play harp if ye sit there feeling sorry for y'sel, jimmy.'
angels? who needs 'em?
