I'm tired. And it's my own idiot fault for being up late last night.
I keep perusing guitar ads and wishing I had all the money in the world to buy all the guitars I want. There's a package on one website for a remake of a '52 Telecaster and a '65 Princeton amplifier, and both sound wonderful. I feel like slipping over to the Gutiarschtadt--I mean, Guitar Center--and giving them a try.
Life is strange, but wonderful. Even despite its being frustrating here and there, and even when things don't live up to whatever seemingly reasonable expectations I'd put on them. I do wish things worked out in reality as nicely as I decide to formulate them in my mind.
And there are plenty of frustrations of late, in a lot of areas. Life is hard and takes a lot of resolve to get through, but like Hemingway wrote, life breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. I like that, a lot. It's Grace Under Fire, something Hemingway was constantly writing about, constantly living out in what he did, and something that I admittedly struggle with. It's accomplishing the impossible because you refuse to give up when things get tough. It's a helluva mantra and a helluva thing to lay before someone, but if more people lived that way, I imagine there would be a lot less complaining, despite perhaps more prevalent and legitimate reason to complain.
What I want is not going to come easy, and I've admittedly wasted a LOT of time in failing to try at it, but that's part of life as well--failing at trying, as much as failing when you try. Yoda once said that there is no Try, there is simply Do and Do Not. You either do something or you don't. Tough love, and a harsh lesson to learn, but I think there's value in a good Try. The above is an attack on the idea of the Try as being fatalistic, something you'll attempt despite your expectation to fail at it. But the good Try is a serious attempt, the willingness to laugh in the face of improbable odds and the temptation to expect failure in the attempt to actually achieve, and is actually a lot closer to Doing than to that failure-oriented try.
In related news, life is hard, get a (bleep) helmet.
I want to take a road trip down what's left of Route 66 someday. I want to drive a vintage or restored '60s Chevy convertible, with the top down, across the Mid- and Southwest sometime, stopping in little Mom-and-Pop places along the way, playing impromptu shows at bars here and there, just to get the atmosphere of a real bar crowd, and put together an album of music based on the live shows and perhaps original material worked out along the way. I want to see that over 2000-mile strip of road along the way, only 80% navigable as it may be, winding its way southwest through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California; from Chicago to Santa Monica. Main Street, USA; and witness the heartbeat of America as it stands now and stood yesterday.
I don't really want to be famous, I don't want the baggage that would come with that. I'd rather be significant than famous. I would rather have a legacy than fame, because fame is fleeting, while a legacy lasts. I would rather be pertinent and relevant 100 years after I die or make my contribution than have all the money and popularity and attention now, to be stripped slowly away as years are accumulated to my life.
And if my legacy only applies to the few people I've personally helped and/or met along the way, so be it. So much the better.
If I have to die before I get old, I should hope I go after my parents. No parent should have to suffer the ordeal of burying their child, and I would rather have to deal with losing them than ever hope they'd have to deal with losing me. In fact, I hope I outlive you all, so that all of your deaths and the accumulated suffering of loss that would come with them would be my burden alone to bear, my cross to carry. Not that I'm full of myself and high-and-mighty, but I wouldn't wish pain on anyone I know.
There is a man sitting next to me that I'm having difficulty dealing with. Without going into description or making fun, I find it taxing to sit near him or even look at him because of who he is. And I hate that it's that way, because quite frankly, he can't really help who he is, and I know that. I'm trying so damn hard to be the shepherd, as a wise man once wrote. So damn hard. And it's not easy, but then again, I know it's not something I can do on my own. But it still takes effort from me, and I know that. Grace Under Fire, as we've established, is not an easy thing, but it is a good thing. I am far from faultless, and so the faults of others are not really my business, to quote a fellow seeker.
Stevie Ray Vaughan is playing guitar in the background, despite the fact that he's been dead for 20 years. He's still just as good as he was then, and someone that I will freely admit I have tons of respect for as a guitar player. Possibly one of my favorites. He joins my odd list of Favorite Guitar Players, many of whom strangely enough happened to have died. Stevie, meet Harrison, Hendrix and Houser. (and Hennessy? Nah...)
Don't beat me just because I said Harrison. Or panic because I said Houser.
I can't predict what your Hendrix experience will be.
I need to write that book. Seeing in Color will be great and relevant when it is finally written, so I just need to do it already.
That's enough for now. I know not many of you are reading. Thanks anyway, it is appreciated.
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