the music and the strings

feels good out today. feels like that day i went to my first detroit festival of the arts a few years ago. not a cloud in the sky. drinking a morning beer and not wearing a shirt. friday is my sunday out here because of scheduling but i dont mind. its a rad day. so ive been playing a lot of guitar lately. more than i really have since i was very young. funny thing is that im here figuring out songs that i used to struggle with when i was younger and all of a sudden something beautiful overtakes me. i realize what it was that first inspired me to see more of this world: music. the feeling is good. it is as if i have seen an old friend for the first time in ages and he hasn't changed a bit.

so what song was it that did ths to me? metallica's orion covered by gabriela y rodrigo.. thats right.. metallica. i've nailed it. i can play almost the entire song in the flamenco style which has been covered so beautifully by the mexican duo. it inspires me. i went out last night with a haze over my eyes and my left hand mimicing the complicated solos as if my guitar was still in my hand. and this followed me everywhere. i wanted to find more musicians and other travelers with their backpacks full of memories and experience to share with one another via melody. i felt like this before; my first time in China. that time around it was sick sad world by incubus as i had just mastered the solo days before getting on my longest plane ride yet. it was the only song stuck in my head for the entire time i traveled and i took it with me like a photograph. in china (shanghai if i remember right) i bought an instrument called a pipa and together we learned the complicated bends and traveled the dense fretboard. i wanted more. i always want more.

this takes me, many travels and many years later, to İstanbul - a whole new world to me. financial setbacks and a pricey addiction to wanderlust have both become minor obsticals between me and the next instrument i wish to conquer: the Ud. but i cant complain. i have with me my oldest and dearest type of friend and his six strings never let me down. i am not the best guitarist and in fact i never want to be. i marvel in the belief that there is always something to be learned and that thirst for knowledge has taken me to many far reaches of the globe.. it does not stop here either.

cool

very very cool :)