Friday funny

Of sorts. I picked up What Men Don't Talk About by Maggie Hamilton again briefly last night. Then saw this on Facebook, and it seemed to fit. (I should have brought the book in to share some of it, but alas, I didn't.)

Wish you were here

Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd, was last night’s guitar song. When the teacher handed out the sheet of music, I just looked at it and thought ‘oh you can’t be serious’. I had never seen anything like it. It’s this strange mix of tabs and sheet music and rhythm notation (which you don’t often see apparently) that was confusing my old flute-playing brain, but after a few ‘excuse me’s I think I have it. For example, there is this zero, with a line attached, which in sheet music looks like a minim, but that was putting too many beats in the bar and so I didn’t get it, but it is just a crotchet that is showing you that it’s a zero, which is why it’s open. Minims in guitar music have circles around them. This is good to know. I had quite a few ah-ha moments last night actually and it was a good lesson. I am not sure about this “hammer on” business though, and it all starts hurting your fingers.

We did the first guitar intro part, but we have the music for the second guitar solo also, complete with the string bending (who invents this stuff?), which is for next week. Here is the original song, listened to by 53 million other people, but here is an unplugged version, from a much older Pink Floyd, which is more what I am aiming for.

 

Still just bleeping on ...

Sorry folks. I’ve been somewhat diverted of late. The rest of last week was not quite so eventful as it’s beginning. The Community College called and left me a message last Wednesday asking me if I was “involved in last night’s shooting incident” and to see how I was going as a result. In discussion with the college my guitar teacher had told them I walked out into the middle of it (and he has to fill in reports etc). So that was nice of them. But I am fine. While I wanted to get out of the way of whatever was going on I didn’t feel so personally threatened, and the fact that I ascertained that police had arrived was reassuring (if I had walked out a couple of minutes earlier and come upon a man with two rifles and no police on the scene it might have been a different story).

It’s back to class tonight. This course is proving fairly challenging for me, but I suppose it’s good to be stretched and not just plod on playing four-chord songs for the rest of my life. We didn’t actually get a new song last week, but some finger-plucking exercises. One of them has this chord called Amaj7#11 in it that goes over four frets. Yikes.

On Saturday we had our markets and blanket appeal at church, which took most of the day (and I had to be there at 8:15 am with all my stuff!). But we collected a truly enormous pile of blankets for Anglicare, and despite all the scaffolding around church we had people come by our markets and I even sold some things, so it was a good day. Saturday night I went to hear a friend from my Connect Group play at a gig. He’s quite exceptional on the guitar and banjo (and managed to play guitar and tambourine at the same time) and I enjoyed that. It was in the strangest little venue in Marrickville though. Very “Inner West”.

I am also leading bible study again this week on Joshua 2, so have been working on that. It’s the story of Rahab, so it’s a good one. Then I have been drowning in extra things to do at work so have mostly been cutting lunch-breaks short.

But, hopefully I am going to have more time for reading more books for the next while, now that I am done with crocheting like there was no tomorrow, for a time.

A poem of poems

Jean challenged me to write a book-spine poem using only books of poetry. Given that most of my books of poetry are called 'The Complete Poems of ...', 'The Collected Poems of ...' or 'Selected poems of ...' I thought this was going to be a difficult undertaking. But hoorah for those little pocket classics that were everywhere some years ago. So, I have taken a little poetic licence with the old, old story, as also told by Ben (bottom poem), Jean, Erin (second poem down) and Meredith. I've included a somewhat obscure reference to the morning star (see particularly here, and ignore the subtitle) and I was hoping for extra points for including a poem that is also the name of a kind of poem. The title of the last volume, which is fading away, is More than One World.

And in the interests of future book-spine poems, if you happen to be writing a book, can I suggest that you please include a verb in the title.

A late Friday afternoon poem

I thought it was perhaps time for a poem, and perhaps a modern one. So, here is one I read recently (you can find it here).

What the Living Do
by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.

Updating

I added to the book-spine poetry post last night. Jean gave me a special challenge to create, but I might have to wait for the weekend for that one, otherwise I am never going to get to bed this week.

I scanned along my shelves last night and spied Chesterton's 'What's wrong with the world?' and then 'For the love of God' by Carson. There's so much fun that could be had ...

Book-spine poetry

Yesterday Jean tagged me in a book-spine poetry meme. I wasn’t going to attempt it for a few days, because I have “things to do” and I thought that if I started messing around with books and poetry it would all be over. However, even after the drama of last night, I couldn’t resist slapping a few together when I got home from guitar class (I could have stayed up all night). Then I wasn’t going to publish this post either as these are short and the shots are not in focus (I did a longer poem, that was even less in focus, so I will save it for later), but I just can’t wait. So here are a couple of quick attempts at it. I might come back and update this post later with more and focused poems. (I have now updated this post.)

On the discovery of books

When I was a child I read books

under the tagalong tree

A pair of blue eyes

the wind in the willows

half a life time ago.

The golden key

the lifted veil

the hole in the forest

the secret river.

For the time being

the child that books built.

I am going to go crazy and tag Simone, Sophie, Erin, Cath, Lucidus, Ben, Nathan, Andrew and Nick (but if you wish not to participate, or it destroys the calibre of your blog, feel free to pass). The rules are:

• Create a book spine poem (examples here).
• Take a picture.
• Post it on your blog.
• Link back to this post.
• Tag another blogger, or two, or ten.