Sunday, March 3, 2013

Starting Again

    I went to see some old and dear friends this past weekend.  We went to see Orrin Evans with a group called Tar Baby.  It was in Durham at a small private club.  The show was excellent.  It was the kind of jazz that I'm starting to love.  I don't confess to understand it, but there is something freeing about it.  The compositions are written and structured, but the solos are open to a great deal of interpretation.  Sometimes, and always when Oliver Lake was soloing, it was free form; from the Ornet Coleman school of thinking.  Sometimes Orrin would play out, and sometimes almost old school bebop.  Shaking his head with a big smile like Ray Charles.  Eric Revis was very charismatic and did most of the speaking.  His bass playing was very sold and funky and his compositions were my favorites.  I was disappointed that Nasheet Waits wasn't there, as he was on the billing.  But the drummer that played was excellent.  I have come along way playing jazz, but I see how much more there is.  What I play seems difficult to some, but I understand it.  Those that I would like to play with on the local scene, I understand, but am a year or more behind the curve.  But this music I saw this weekend was beyond my understanding.  I would try, if I could, to sit in with them, but I don't have a reference point of where to begin. I love the mystery behind what they're doing.  Maybe to fully understand it would make it mundane.
      While I was there I went to a very upscale music store.  The kind that locks the door and you have to knock to be let in.  They had a special room of acoustic guitars.  Two walls of flat tops and one wall of archtops.  I was able to play a used $15000 Buscarino.  It was perfect!  Not a flaw.  Working with Brad Nickerson I've seen perfection first hand.  I realize I still have a long way to go.  There is no substitute for 30 plus years of experience.  But I will say that Buscarino's guitar looked better than mine and played as well, but I think my last two guitars sounded better.  Of course that's my biased opinion.  Eventually I'll begin to make them as cosmetically perfect as they should be, but then they won't be as cheap as they are now.
      Having said all that, I have a new commission.  So, tomorrow I'll start working on the next guitar.  This one looks to be a 16 inch.  The details haven't been worked out yet, but I'll post them and pictures as I find out.
      Thanks for listening and here is another Rumi poem to give you insight and hope.

There are guides
who can show you the way.
Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing.
Keep wanting the connection with presence
with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.

Muhammed said, do not theorize
about essence.  All speculations
are just more layers of covering.
Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains
are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Do not claim them.  Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent.






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