Finally I get to practice.

Last week "Happy Feet" was off the air 'cause being the Tuesday evening program, every time there's an uncontested closed primary or school bonds election, they get bumped off. It was the first time in my life I wasn't eagerly awaiting the returns, but mad 'cause they preempted MY SHOW for the sake of that so-called democracy thing. Oh well.

Two weeks ago -- or was it three -- I forget -- I was picking out melodies to it on single strings. It was three. Two weeks ago I got interrupted by a visitor. One week ago -- I could have cried -- it wasn't there, and I'd looked forward to it all day long.

This week it's back. YES! So I get to spend three glorious hours with my guitar playing along. And I'm getting waaaaay better at it. I'm not great yet but it's amazing what you really can do with three or four chords in different progressions. And I'm picking out melodies across the different strings. And playing chords. And even playing REAL MUSIC by playing the individual notes of different chords in different orders. I've been so intent on getting "Barleycorn" *perfect* that I start to feel bad if I'm not playing up to speed for what's on the record or wind up hitting one note wrong in twenty. I get obsessed with how and when I replace the first finger behind the second fret (first fret for you non-zero-fret types) on that A minor chord 'cause it just makes it sound *so* much better when you do it just a certain way before you go through that series of plucks again. Yeah, I'm a perfectionist -- to the point that this song is the only song in the whole world and damn it I *am* gonna master it!

I *need* this weekly radio show, 'cause I get *so* intense about these certain things that's how -- exactly how -- I wind up giving up on one instrument after another. In short, it ceases to be fun. So just listening to some amazing music and playing along with it and realizing "oh -- so that's *really* all there is to it" just gives me a tremendous boost. Having this show once a week makes playing fun. If I get "lost", I just sit back and listen and the music doesn't stop. More often than not it starts to make sense a minute later and I jump right back in.

Of course the Barre chords are still beyond the strength of the base of my thumb to withstand for more than about fifteen seconds. Maybe if I can come up with some way to get paid to practice the guitar I can figure it out. (Heh heh -- I wonder if I could go back to school now and change my major from "Linguistics" to "Guitar".) I figure eight hours a day is probably enough time to spend practicing. :)

In all seriousness, I will get there! I hope to get some help this coming Saturday. If I am VERY lucky I may even -- well, I won't predict the future.

Which brings me to the really good news -- the Albuquerque Folk Festival's comin' to town next Saturday and I fully intend to spend ALL DAY there.

Of course they're all about acoustic. I can imagine this is the crowd that booed when Bob Dylan plugged in his guitar. Silly me, I've only got an archbody electric acoustic, or an acoustic electric, depending how you look at it. Then again, lucky me -- my hollowbody's not electric if it's not plugged in, now is it? OF COURSE NOT. Just ignore the knobs and switches, they're for decoration only. At the same time, unlike a solidbody, it does sound good without the amp -- just a tiny bit quieter than an actual acoustic acoustic. It's the only guitar I have and damn it I *AM* gonna learn to play it!

I'll take the banjo too, just in case I get too many sneers, 'cause the point is to LEARN and if the only way to do that without conflict is to keep the Gretsch in its case, then so be it -- I know damn well I couldn't do what little I can now if I hadn't tried to play banjo first. But I've got no intent to leave the guitar at home. It's got enough similarities to the banjo that some of it carries over from one instrument to the other, but enough dissimilarities that I want to learn to play the guitar way more than the banjo.

Oh man I'm gonna have a blast. It's at the State Fairgrounds, same place they have Pride (and the rodeo, for that matter). Part of me's dying for a simple, straightforward, uncomplicated weekend where I don't have anything to do, but I would no more miss this than I would miss Pride. (That's not exactly true -- I wouldn't miss Pride if I had to be wheeled to it on a stretcher!)

It's taken me two years to get a job with a schedule where I can actually make these events. The same sort of events that brought me up to Albuquerque in the first place, that made me think "this is the sort of city I could definitely stand to live in". Working graveyard was a big old mistake, 'cause once I did it everybody knew I "could" work nights. I'm glad I did (doing so got me out of working the phony natural foods co-op), but I never imagined it'd take me over a year to transition completely out of it. It has. And nothing makes a big event less inviting than being in the middle of a week for which you've slept an average of three hours a day for three days in a row and know you'll be lucky to maintain that average the coming three days. For Pride MMIV I think I stayed awake something like 48 hours just to be a part of it.

I should start winding down now. It's eleven as I write this, if I sign off now I'll be lying in the dark without fail by 12:30, which'll give me time to sleep and wake up and all that. Part of me *never* wants to sleep. Never. But I'm in the process of retraining my body, which is a big old deal after working nights long enough that I built my whole life around that fact. My cricadian rhythms still aren't "normal" and may never be, but it's a miracle that I am still awake and alert at 2 or 3 PM these days. The week after I left Foxes I thought I'd never get that far!