Guitar0822 (One Month Since Starting Practice)
It seems a month has passedsince I started playing the guitar. Unfortunately, I can hardly say I have improved as much as I had hoped, and it is likely that due to my relationship with spatial awarenessmy aptitude for the guitar is probably not very high (the fact that I mentioned losing coordinates or my axis being off is likely the cause of this). However, there is value in experiencing things not going well like this. I have a very low boiling point when it comes to things not going well, especially regarding music. I suspect this is because it became my default to have started playing the
pianowithout any struggle at all during my early childhood, which I barely remember, and having acquired absolute pitchbefore the critical period without even being conscious of it, leading me to tend to think that other things should be the same. By being repeatedly confronted with the exact opposite—that things don't go well or progress easily, "even in music"—I feel I have been able to gradually break down the "taken-for-granted", the fixed ideas that were never actually a given. Even though it was extremely frustrating and painful.
Since it is a milestone in a sense, I realized after I got back that I should have practiced something that would give me a sense of accomplishment, like improving the precision of Gilbertor Big Bridge, but it was too late.
I ended up working on matching my singing to the guitar part of Satie that I had been curious about the day before, and as expected, it resulted in another disappointment. Well, wild birds are free-spirited, so it can't be helped.
Using the high notes and the top string a lot was good practice since I haven't done much of that even when playing melodies, but perhaps it was too early to try to match it with singing as well... As I feared, my focus was entirely absorbed by my fingers, and I couldn't pay any attention to the singing at all. As a result, the singing was expressionless, blank, and unstable. Compared to
the bass version from the day before (which has less finger load), it's almost laughable.
During Carry on dancing, my focus was absorbed by the variable rhythm section and I was overwhelmed, but at that time, my left hand barely needed to move and it was just a repetition of the same phrase, so it was still manageable. This time, the finger movement range is larger, there are more variations in the phrases, and the chorus section has continuous movement. It might be hard to tell from the outside, but in my own mind, I feel like I'm already rolling my eyes back, foaming at the mouth, and barely able to produce a voice while gasping for air. Therefore, I can't even spare the cost for minimal vocalization or maintaining pitch, let alone expression. I'm like a computer on the verge of freezing with its fans spinning at full blast.
I thought that it is important to think about what is intertwined behind what is visible. The reason I am not singing "as I would like" may not just be a problem of singing technique or vocalization. By treating unmanifested factors as "non-existent," one can lose sight of reality. This is likely true not only for individual performance but for everything happening in the world. Humans, and this world, cannot be divided so simply. The short-sightedness of feeling like you understand something by simplifying contradictory and uncertain events into established frameworks (mainly those that are convenient for oneself and in the direction one wants to see) causes many things to be missed. The root of Japan's current decline lies in the continued ignoring and exclusion of layers that are not mainstream in society—so-called minorities, the powerless, facts inconvenient to the system, the preciousness of infrastructure that is plain and inconspicuous but supports society, its maintenance and risk management, and the diligent technicians and craftsmen who work with their hands.
Darren and Cocco, there are things you can notice and say precisely because you "know." There is no lie in their kindness. I think it was good that, through the guitar, I was able to reunite with music and words that had disappeared from my mind ever since I
retired. I had been spending my time prescribing the necessary sounds and words to myself all along.
At first, the strings were missing and I was playing with the frets facing upward, but now the strings are all there and the frets are, for the time being, in a state close to vertical. (I also think that maybe starting to play with the frets facing upward was a result of trying to play with a feeling like a koto—trying to adapt past experience.) The times when I would get angry at myself for not being able to do even such simple things, I have now become able to handle with
small steps, thinking that it can't be helped since I am a beginner. The curse of C major has also been lifted.
How will this path continue? Is there even a path to begin with?
Wild birds move forward. Toward the "middle of nowhere." I am also a paradox, aren't I, Darren.
