GENERAL NOTES:

These are going to be quite lengthy and exhaustive, so, at the outset, for folks, who would prefer the Cliff's Notes, {TL;DR} summary, the first paragraph of what continues below should suffice.

{TL;DR} This piece is a stream of consciousness experiment I decided to do, when I felt unusually starved for inspiration. Essentially, I tried to deliberately write down various interesting thoughts that came to me on those days, when the aches and pains (especially in my knees) are bad enough, that I will decide to consume a medical cannabis edible before embarking upon guitar practice, adding to the scratch pad, where appropriate, both before and during practice, my left hand often continuing to tap and/or fret its way up and down the neck, even as my right hand would briefly pick up a pen, whenever the urge struck. / {TL;DR}

(long-assed recitation for those who possess the patience):

As with a few previous pieces I have written and/or thought of during such altered states, I typically prefer a THC/CBD mixture that's lighter on the THC and heavier on the CBD. (For folks, who aren't aware, THC is the cannabinoid that gets you baked, whereas the CBD has excellent pain-management properties, but offers very little in the way of psychoactive effects). Being that I am trying to learn guitar using fifty-year-old hands, as opposed to the far more youthful hands that most (good) guitarists start learning on, (at a more sensible age than 40+), the more I can stave off the cramping, and the various aches and pains in my hands, (as well as the aforementioned ones in my knees, and occasionally my lower back as well) when I practice, the more pleasant and enjoyable the session, and the more productive, overall, it will generally be, (i.e. the point, where mere 'practice' gains that extra nuance, and becomes more akin to the Platonic/Aristotelean concept of: "Praxis" (πρᾶξις)

The reason I generally prefer the lower THC / higher CBD mixture is that there is a fine line, where the lowered inhibitions of being just a little bit baked is far more useful and productive than being a little bit (or even considerably) MORE baked, hence, I've found that my sweet-spot is a 10 mg THC/40-50 mg CBD mixture, depending upon how bad the physical aches and pains I am dealing with are on a particular, given day.

(briefly steps up, onto soapbox):

...and, please note that I am not promoting or advocating any particular substance to anyone; especially if you just so happen to live in a place, where it is illegal. I am only talking about what seems to work best for me. Your own body, and your own choices are strictly your own business, and not mine, and I quite honestly prefer to not try and tell other people how to live their lives, especially, when I have a hard enough time living my own. :P

(/steps off soapbox)

Still, once the edible starts to perform its magick, sometimes the thoughts that come to me don't always have a lot to do with the music that I am playing, (at least not directly), and often, my mind can run on two or more tracks at once. Hence, from this point forward, I think it will be easier for everyone concerned if I am to split my comments up into the corresponding edible-assisted guitar practice days they correspond to, even if, occasionally, certain ideas and concepts might somewhat bleed over from one particular session to another.

Oh, and one more thing before we move on: Sometimes bits and pieces from the songs I was playing during each day's respective practice session, will occasionally creep more directly into the words. To the best of my knowledge, I have done my best to stay well-below the threshold for "fair usage". Still, I encourage readers to go and listen to the songs in question, whether on your online player of choice, or a video on YouTube, and perhaps toss some royalties towards the original artists in question. I figure that's the least I can offer in thanks for the inspiration...



DAY 1: (Famous Studio Chatter & The Global Elephant-in-the-Room)


On the day I decided to launch this experiment, I found myself thinking of a number of things, including some instances of studio-chatter that wound up being preserved on a few well-known recordings, and, which are musical easter eggs, that have, in and of themselves, often become legendary. One in particular that I have mentioned includes a female voice declaring: "It's just the normal noises in here!" which is heard right before the start of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' song: "Even the Losers" off of their 1979 album: "Damn The Torpedoes".

According to the wiki article for that particular album, the voice was that of Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell's wife Marcie, after he had recorded a demo of his guitar part, whilst at home, and was complaining to his wife about the noise from a nearby washing machine bleeding its way into the recording.

Another instance I have quoted (mostly on a follow-up day), is Ringo Starr's exasperated shout of: "I've got blisters on my fingers!" at the end of one of (numerous) takes of "Helter Skelter" during the recording process for the White Album.

With regards to the general train-of-thought that my ideas seemed to be running along: Well, apart from the actual theory and technique of the practice itself, there is also maybe a universal, ongoing theme that's summed up quite nicely in something I once read in an old Swamp Thing comic back in the Eighties, where Swampy is pondering about all the things that humans make most readily (and in descending order), namely:

We make noise, we make war, and (very occasionally) we might make love.
And or course, in this current reality of mid-2022 AD, there's always the Blue & Yellow Elephant in the Room -- There, but for the Grace of G-d, go I. No matter how serious I might feel my various midlife crisis gripes and grumps to be, they tend to very seriously pale beside the current reality of thousands of people, who are having to fight and die in a war...

There really is that sobering realisation that my real Privilege is that, at the moment, I am here, and not there, and there's still one hell of a long way that things can descend into 'bad' before "here" could become even one tenth as bad as they've currently got it over "there", at present.
Once again, there, but for the Grace of G-d, go I.


Practice Highlights:

"Under the Milky Way" by The Church

Vocals and Guitar: Samick LW-015G Dreadnought, aka "Darling Devotchka", pick-strummed -- standard tuning (i.e., "Eddie Ate Dynamite. Good-Bye, Eddie!")

"Summer Wine" by Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood

Vocals and Guitar: Takamine New Yorker GY11ME-NS Parlour Guitar, still unnamed, fingerstyle -- standard tuning.


DAY 2: (Weltschmerz, Nuclear Paranoia & Midlife-Crisis Angst)

On the second day of practice, the global elephant still very much remained in the room, perhaps even looking at me a little more balefully and/or reproachfully than the previous day.

"Seriously, dude? You can noodle around on a guitar at a time like this?!?"

And, well... Perhaps for good measure, I also felt echoes of the same sort of nuclear paranoia that I remembered so well from the depths of the Cold War, and once again asking myself:

"What's the chance that someone might just decide to push that Big Red Button® now, and get it over with?"

I am often reminded of an old Cabaret Voltaire lyric from their 1987 song: "Don't Argue".

"It's not right to leave everyone wonderin' how;
I say: 'If you're gonna drop it, then drop it now!'"

And, of course, there is always a counterpoint to this from the relentlessly positive Howard Jones, and his catchy-as-the-plague 1985 song: "Things Can Only Get Better." (if you're a fellow Gen-Xer, you're very welcome for that particular earworm), :P

I also spent a good chunk of the practice working on some Rick Beato fingerpicking exercises (seriously, that man is the YouTube guitar god. I have found his instructional videos more useful than anyone else out there, and I don't mind giving him a well-deserved plug. :) )

Once I get nice and warmed up on the fingerpicking, I try a bit of Simon & Garfunkel because, let's face it: Paul Simon is a beast at fingerstyle playing.


Practice Highlights:

"I am a Rock" by Simon & Garfunkel

Vocals and Guitar: Takamine New Yorker GY11ME-NS Parlour Guitar, still unnamed, fingerstyle -- standard tuning, capo 5.

Rick Beato Fingerpicking Exercises:

"The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel

Vocals and Guitar (Takamine New Yorker), fingerstyle -- standard tuning

"Tiger Blues" (original song/WIP)

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), tapped and pick-strummed -- standard tuning
twelve-bar blues, E7, A7, Bm7 with turnaround


DAY 3: (Cool, Cruel Summer)

Obviously, I found myself thinking of the Bananarama song "Cruel Summer", because for many reasons, we seem to currently find ourselves in a crueller one than usual (and, at least for Midwestern North America), so far a cooler than usual one, as well.

Indeed, I'm no longer quite so sure if Eliot was right about April being the cruellest month...

It seems both foot-stampingly unfair, yet at the same time depressingly logical that the first real summer beyond the COVID plague should bring yet another Horseman of the Apocalypse. I guess Famine and Death are most likely already waiting in the Green Room, with the ashtray already half-filled with chain-smoked cigarette butts...


Practice Highlights -

"Rooks" by Shearwater

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3

(Fool) If You Think it's Over by Chris Rea

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning

Crazy Mary by Victoria Williams
(as covered by Pearl Jam)

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning

Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 5


DAY 4: (Memories of Lion's Head & Vultures Landing on Mars)

As the fourth day of this particular experiment was finally nice enough that I was able to practice outside after several days of cold and dreary rain, it felt like enough of a renewal that I found myself thinking of yet another previous artistic and general headspace renewal: Specifically the one I experienced during the midst of the COVID lockdowns, when I decided to make several road trips, during the Summer and Early Autumn of 2020, north along the old Garafraxa Road (Ontario Highway 6).

The Old Garafraxa Road cuts vaguely North-Northwest (NXNW) across Southwestern and Midwestern Ontario, mostly following the Niagara Peninsula northward from Lake Erie, and continuing all the way up to the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron, eventually across the ferry to Manitoulin Island, and then eventually to meet up with the Trans Canada Highway as it crosses the wide expanse of Northern Ontario.

If one is to follow the old trope of a map of Southern Ontario being superimposed onto a giant elephant, the Old Garafraxa Road traces a path roughly from the elephant's lower chest to the end of its tail. (The Manitoulin and Northern Ontario segments of Highway 6 are beyond the elephant's tail).

Likewise, those, who know about the Ontario Elephant also know that the fine folks of the Huron port city of Owen Sound (also along the Garafraxa Road), tend to get more than a little pissed-off to be reminded of just where, exactly Owen Sound is located on the elephant

On the trips I have made thus far, I only went as far as the Bruce Peninsula, visiting places such as Owen Sound at its Southeastern corner, and up the east side of the Peninsula, proper, through towns such as Springmount (which has deep connections to my father's side of the family), up through Shallow Lake and Hepworth, where one is presented with the choice of continuing westward to the Lake Side of the Peninsula, where likes Sauble Beach and Sauble Falls, or if one turns North, to continue along the Bay Side of the Peninsula, up through towns such as Clavering, Wiarton (home of a particular cannibalistic, babby-eating albino weather-predicting rodent), Mar, Ferndale and Lion's Head. If one continues still further north, there is also Miller Lake before Land's End at the flowerpot cliffs of Tobermory, and the aforementioned Ferry to Manitoulin.

The name "Garafraxa" is said to originate from an Aboriginal word for the large, North American cat known by many names, including: "Mountain Lion", "Panther, or "Cougar", and (supposedly) marks that particular area of ice-age-shaped fields and forests as the "Land of the Panther," who did indeed, at one point, roam freely throughout nearly all of Eastern North America. Hence, there is a very deep, spiritual symbolism in journeying northward through these gradually-less-tamed lands once ruled by Garafraxa... Even more still when one reaches Lion's Head, which is named for an Ice-Age stone, cliffside feature along the Huron Coast, which vaguely resembles the head of an ancient North American Cave Lion (Panthera Atrox), and who ruled these lands long before Garafraxa.

There was also some very heavy symbolism and symmetry at play, as I chose to undertake those trips whilst wearing a neck-chain with the small, silver vial containing the ashes of Drifter, who was a tame, captive cougar I worked with for a number of years as part of a zoological research project that was originally supposed to be part of my Master's Thesis.
Unfortunately, however, due to a lack of funding and several other issues, I ultimately got my M.Sc. for a different project, although I was still able to continue the original research on a smaller scale, (and privately-funded), with a view to eventually publishing the data if possible. Both I, and my main associate (namely the cougar-in-question's legal owner), continued collecting data until Drifter eventually passed due to age-related issues in November of 2015.

Hence, for a lot of the trip, somehow the music of Shearwater (as well as Jonathan Meiburg's side-project "Loma"), seemed most appropriate with the spiritual symbolism of the trip, especially since these lands have some vague similarities to perhaps a colder-weather version of the Central Texas Hills Country, which gave rise to Shearwater, and their music. Likewise, just as Toronto has NXNE, the daddy-of-them-all is SXSW in Austin, TX, where Shearwater first made a name for themselves.

In one added bit of symbolism, during a follow-up trip up the Garafraxa in late Summer of 2021, I stopped along the way in a small town called Williamsford, which is in the middle of Ontario Mennonite Country, and whilst I was there, I paid a short visit to a place called the "Great Books Café", which is a large used book store and café located inside Williamsford's old, village mill. Whilst browsing through stacks on the second floor, I came across a copy of: "The Eastern Panther" by Bruce Davis.
The symmetry of that, of course, did not escape me. And, well, since I didn't already own the book, I rectified that particular situation about ten minutes later.

After that brief detour, I continued to drive NXNE, just as the music continued SXSW, and just as my memories likewise continued apace yet another year later, and yet another year older, as my I let my fingers on the guitar continue the poetry of the strings.

And, for those, who have been slogging and enduring their way through all of my words, thus far, I think the remainder of what I could say for this particular edible-assisted practice day are likely said best within the poetry, itself.


Practice highlights:

Closer to Home/I'm Your Captain - Grand Funk Railroad

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning

Seven Bridges Road - (as covered by The Eagles)

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning

All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 4

"What's Another Year?" - Johnny Logan

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning


DAY 5: (Ignoramus/Ignor-Am-I?
/ / More Canine-Interruptions)


I think there is little more I can say about this particular session than what is already explicitly-mentioned in the Stream-of-Consciousness itself, other than the fact that I have left the final product perhaps a good bit more unpolished and unedited than I usually do, simply because it seemed to lose something essential and looked a lot more like a "dog returning to his vomit" partially-digested word-salad than an actual stream-of-consciousness that seems to be going somewhere.

(Yes, I know that might sound more than a little pretentious, but I assure the reader that it was not meant in that way.) :P


Practice Highlights:

"Urge For Going" by Joni Mitchell

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3

"Leader of the Band" by Dan Fogelberg

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 1


Day 6: (Plague and War Crush Out Another Cigarette,
& Poke The Bear)

I think that, like the previous practice session, most of the points and references within this one are pretty much explicitly-made, and/or reasonably self-explanatory.


Practice Highlights:

"Hearts" by Marty Balin

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 3

"Today" by Jefferson Airplane

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning

"Someday, You Will Be Loved" - Death Cab For Cutie

Vocals and Guitar (Samick), pick-strummed -- standard tuning, Capo 4

"True Love Will Find You in the End" - Daniel Johnston.

(Hohner Big River G Harmonica, Vocals and Guitar -- standard tuning)