Day 119. 12 bar original. (28/4/19)
I've had to stop playing guitar.
Not permanently, like. Just for the moment. The immediate moment. Because the study is bloody freezing.
We're days away from May and I have a room that's too cold for me to work/play/mess about in.
It's not cold enough, in general, to put the heat on (though the fire is on in the living room, just to take the edge off) but that room? That room is bloody freezing.
The problem is the study (which used too be the garage before we were expecting our Matty and suddenly in need of another room so conversion happened) is at the front of the house. The back of the house gets the sun, when sun is present, from first thing in the morning to teatime (ie round about now). The front gets it from mid-afternoon on but the houses opposite cut out the light to the study.
Hence: never bloody warm.
Definition of first world problems? My study isn't warm enough to play guitar in.
My fingers are too cold to fret the strings properly.
I could feasibly bring the guitar into the living room but I was playing the Ric. Which would mean also dragging the amp through. And making the neighbour listen to my playing. Which wouldn't be distressing, I'm pretty damn decent, but it may not be to his taste. He plays dance music, I'm fairly sure an approximation of the Byrds back catalogue stylings wouldn't be his choice of Sunday evening listening.
The thing about guitars, and any of you that play and own more than one know this, is that you play each differently. Every guitar drags a different style from you. The 12 string Ric pulls out the hammer ons, the bouncing across the frets, the slides and glides. The Gretsch demands power chords and fuzz, the Strat a warm tone and some blues, the Ibanez Artcore gives jazz chords. Each one breathes differently. The banjo is another thing altogether (and much closer to the Ric).
A photo came up on Facebook memories this morning. From four years ago. Captioned 'guitar du jour' because I'm more than capable of pretension. My most recent acoustic acquisition. Four years ago. I had no idea I'd owned it that long and couldn't figure out how the time had passed. And I'd moved back to it quite a bit the last few days.
A big tone, a wood that resonates. Simon & Patrick, a firm of Canadian luthiers who only use wood grown within ten miles of their factory. Or something like that. I've only ever seen one other person use one by the same firm. Adele.
The reason for the move back to the acoustic? I needed to write a song. I needed to tailor something to an era and a feel. Needed to massage lyrics into something that somebody else would have written.
I really do make life hard for myself sometimes. I'm not even sure I can write songs as myself any longer, it's been a long time and it's a discipline I've fallen out of. But god I wrote some blinders in my time. You've never heard them, you'll just have to trust me on this point.
Writing as somebody else though? Someone from another era? A self imposed decision bizarre even by own standards of hasty decision making.
It's going okay though. But I really need to transform it into something from somewhere in 1966. Something that jangles.
But it's too bloody cold.
So I'm writing this and having a beer. Life's hard.
(Soundtrack: David De Gea's ongoing disasters. Chelsea gifted an equaliser by a United goalie who clearly isn't the man he used to be. Comes to us all.)
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