erinnightwalker:

laboutiquedemusique:

German luthier Jens Ritter wanted to create a Jazz guitar that was able to cover classic Jazz tones, yet achieved this while being a solid body guitar. This is the remarkable instrument he came up with. I present to you The Princess Isabella Blue Dragon.

Soooooo preeeettttttyyyyyyyy

Friends occasionally send me links to guitars they want me to see. Lolly asked for my opinion on this one and I will share with the proviso that I’m looking at it from the vantage point of a luthier. It’s an exquisite objet d’art but it makes no sense as a musical tool.

It’s designed to be played while seated (there are no strap buttons) but for aesthetic reasons the maker has put the jack on the backside of the instrument. Any time you make basic functions more difficult for the player you’ve lost sight of the goal.

The brocade is amazing and I really like the color and pattern! It’s a jazz guitar, though. Do you know how many hours jazz guitarists play in a week? They all teach as well as perform, and there are maybe six in the world who can afford two really great guitars. Someone’s sweaty arm is going to rub that fabric 1500 hours a year. It reminds me of a $12,000 wedding dress -now that the photos have been taken, what is it good for?  It might actually achieve those classic Jazz tones but nobody is ever going to explore them. It will be locked away in a collectors’ case.

That’s not to say that stuff like this doesn’t have a place. There are people who make cars never intended to be driven, and wristwatches too precious to wear. I’d rather make a guitar that someone is going to play.

Sunday night still sucks, but:

-Watched the first two episodes of Black Mirror, Season 3.  Blown away. Possibly the best science fiction followed by the best horror I’ve seen so far this decade.

-The internet wanted me to learn how to make Spam at home.  (The meat, not the mail).   Then the internet wanted me to learn how men my age tighten crepey skin on their neck.   I didn’t want to learn either of those things.

-Some time ago I determined that there were only two or three living musicians whose passing would inspire real, heartfelt loss in me. I’m not talking about sycophantic facebook accolades and posturing, but the real thing.  A profound acknowledgement that I’ve seen the world through their lyrics.  I respect so many songwriters, but there’s on a few that I can truly mourn. I felt a genuine hurt earlier.

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

It’s possible you don’t like Bob Dylan.  You won’t, however, find a more pertinent set of lyrics.  They’re actually too dense to listen to and comprehend without the text, and strangely the inverse is also true. Without the music the lyrics don’t really work because there are implied breaks and contractions and shifts in tense within the rhymes.   This is a compositional monster with a delivery more to do with Chuck D than Pete Seeger.

It’s not even a protest song.  It’s full of venom and cynicism but taken to a level that comes around somehow in a circle. If you point out everything that is wrong at once you end up whirling and frenzied, and at the center of a vortex. Each of us is in our own way, the eye of a storm.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

-There are times when a post I’ve made takes off and pushes past the usual confines and I’ll feel regret that I didn’t take the time to render things more carefully. “D’oh!  I guess that one was important.”, etc.  Still, I can’t take an hour to draw and redraw what is really an exercise in stream-of-conscious thinking.

-On a related note, I’m considering changing my tumblr theme for the first time in five or six years. It’s weird that I can feel so careless about drawing my own head, yet agonize over a blog theme.

-I’m eating a plate of baby spinach that might otherwise serve a family of four. 

A pile of leaves is a living thing. Growing, shifting, crawling around, its edges pulled back to reveal a carpet of yesterday’s green.

Doing this reminds me of other times and people who are gone.  When I was a boy we had rakes with metal tines that impaled as many leaves as they swept, and one had to stop periodically to pick them free with callused fingers.  I remember my father’s sniffles and dogs that once patrolled the perimeter. The sound of cold coming in over the trees.

I do this stuff alone now, and different lyrics circle about inside me.  I’m not sad, exactly, but there is a definite sense of distance.  The maple leaves are of a slightly different hue when gathered into a pile here.

Being subject to more than the usual amount of bullying as a child, I became pretty attuned to the mechanics of hate and intimidation. I noticed that the real stuff never happened when there was a teacher or authority figure nearby. (There was a more insidious institutional thing of course, but the traumatic stuff usually began with four or five guys in a room or on the bus without supervision).

I look like a racist. No seriously, I *really* look racist.  So much so that racists feel comfortable around me. They tell me things in confidence and sometimes I’ll let them prattle until an opportune moment to lower the boom. The backpedaling is… interesting to watch.

Same with unwanted sexual advances.  In the couple of instances where I’ve made a real difference it was because I give every impression of being a upstanding whiteman bro-coder just sitting and minding my own business. I’m not though.

So the way I figure it, I’m not the first person a stranger would turn to for help, nor am I a perceptible threat to those who like to bully.  Think of me as a nice surprise, or a really nasty one depending on which side of the situation you find yourself on.