Futile Horn

05.09.2003 - 12:12 am (take that pancreas)

In my quest to learn to play a fingerpicking style of guitar, I learned an old Civil War song called "Cruel War" about a girl who doesn't want to leave her soldier boy, so she cuts her hair and goes off to battle at his side. Naturally she takes a bullet and dies on the field. For some reason the story left me wondering about those scenes in the movies where someone is shot, gives a dramatic monolog then quickly expires. Where on your body do you need to be hit for that kind of scenario to take place? Heart you've no time at all, stomach you'll be in agony for hours or days, legs and arms won't do, face... well, it's never a head wound in the movies. My money is on the lungs. I figure blood quickly filling the lungs would be good to drown you. Does anyone know anything about this?

I've been learning a new style and to put it to use I've practicing a song we all know and love, and my wrist hurts. Not the "I'm not used to this" sort of pain, but the "I don't want to do this ever again" kinda pain. It's entirely tolerable at this point but I'm afraid of having to quit after aggravating it over a period of months or years. I think there is a correction I can make that might help but the part of me that worries is worried about it.

I hate playing other people's songs. If it sounds bad I feel like a klutz and if it sounds good I feel like a fraud.

I hate my own songs too. They're ugly. I'm not even talking about aesthetics. Aesthetics don't even matter, because no one pays me any attention anyway. They say and mean ugly things. My last year of college I used to write every day for about three or so months, and about two thirds through I remember getting frustrated there was nothing even sympathetic about any of it. Or human. It was all just ugly. I kept seeing and hearing things around me that would make you ache, but I just had a lot words that were hard or whiny at best.

It's true I like ugly things. In the end, it's the devil who is the source of all beauty. I saw a movie yesterday called Rashamon. It tells four versions of the same story, each clouded by some form of self-serving lie because even the victims of the events are guilty of some sin foul enough to hide the truth. A young priest who hears the story is so overwhelmed by the ugliness of it all that he is about to lose his faith in humanity, but it is restored at the last moment by one man's good deed. But in some sense it is an act of shame used to cover something more terrible within. The man's redemption from one point of view is just another lie. In some sense, isn't all redemption just crude paint over a stain?

Perhaps there is no need for such a pessimistic view on life, but I think it exposes a weakness in our folk wisdom method of judging character. Good and evil don't amount to much. In my experience, courage is everything.

The one virtue that I, conspicuously, have very little of.

Something is leaking gas down here, I'll post this later.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn