“It is the springtime of my loving, the second season i am to know….you are the sunlight in my growing, so little warmth i’ve felt before…it isn’t hard to feel me glowing, i watched the fire that grew so low.”~~~ “Rain Song” Led Zeppelin
So once again i am left adrift negotiating the surface chop of my own doubts, suspicions of vagueness, vagrant paragraphs approached cautiously as they dance white-tipped endless waves yet to be negotiated, bypassed or plunged headlong into on a wild lake’s emotional surface and waking on these mild resonant late March southern mornings and knowing i will leave soon, trade this life for another and for longer this time i cling to the idea that my myriad imperfections hold the key to authentic expression going forward.
There is much in the air here in this southern spring season now after some false starts, those hopes of making this winter something of value before the return north and now with a renter in hand it will be for longer and a home there to winterise even if imperfectly and so much to consider, plan for, but i have proved to myself that i can live with that. And with the challenges that come with wanting something and realising it and none of that would have been possible with nagging doubt of own abilities, with the sideways glance to what others think, or a need for perfection. I can do so many things with enthusiasm with attendant mediocrity embraced if released from the comparison to others more startling talents. Fly-fishing, building things, writing, making music or making love. Listening and absorbing the stories emanating from hearts of strangers but even more intent on not losing the moire enduring connections.
Dug out the guitar mid-week, the acoustic Martin under the bed in its dusty case after watching the film “Almost Famous” and hearing its soundtrack, the spiritual one of my own life was transported back into a creative urge again, as i have always been a musician, albeit perhaps a mediocre one. Also revelling in the actors and the story in particular the Phillip Seymour Hoffman music journalist who i imagined could have been the father of one of the writers here on Substack. Resonance is a good thing. A younger Frances McDormand. Great film all the way around and i had a mind to learn “Tangerine” so i polished the guitar and re-strung it and searched YouTube for the song. Instead i came across another Jimmy Page tune, one that always seemed a bit like a bridge too far but that suited the mood. And it is after all spring. I wish i could sing it. Maybe one day i will try. But i learned it then and there or started to and there is the evidence of every halting step and missed beat and even frustration but behind it all is the solid basis on which i intend to live out this life even if by imitation which in itself is flattery of the highest order.
I have a loose method of learning songs, listening to several versions studio or live by the artist, then a lesson or 2 and cover versions, all on YouTube. I’m no beginner now so am able to hear some nuance and the seduction is more immediate and even more gratefully reciprocal, as if the melody taking form under fingers is rewarding me in turn for my attentions, the learning comes fast if acceptably imperfect given the ever widening scope of interests, distractions.
2 things:
Along the way i discovered in my reading that Jimmy Page’s two chord shift at very start paid homage to George Harrison’s song “Something” as he had suggested Page needed to write a ballad. He did and his creative artistry found this tuning to voice more conventional lyrical patterns. Its a song i butcher here but i like tracing the paths talented artists use to achieve their summits, like a rock-climber with less daring or talent follows another’s path fresh-blazed but receives satisfaction from
also At the end of the film the precocious kid in the film after Kate Hudson sends the rock star back to his place to have a reckoning with fact he had betrayed him by denying facts of hius magazine piece lets all that disappointment go and good-naturedly picks up his tape recorder to interview him “one last time” asking the Billy Crudup character “So…Russell. What do you love about music?”
Russell who has been through a journey in the film testing our own allegiances with him as well pulls up a chair by the kid’s bed and drops pretence, embracing the moment warts and all for its authenticity and chance to voice his true feelings. “To begin with” he starts and pauses with palpitating engaging effect before uttering the film’s last word: “everything.”
I won’t disagree here. Take care.
Nice going with the song!
“negotiating the surface chop of my own doubts” and embracing mediocrity… here too. Go you. Music, movement, questions. Yes.