The All-Thing

I've been going to a weekly jam near work on and off for the past few years and recently pretty regularly—and lately it has been absolutely fantastic. I'm just have a ton of fun every time I go.

I've a friend who related to me a conversation he had with his teacher when he was just beginning to play. He complained that at all the jams he went to everyone was always so much more advanced than he was. His teacher said, "You're lucky. Enjoy it while it lasts, cause once you get good, it sucks to have to always play with people who aren't at your level."

Obviously that's a bit of an over-simplification, because being surrounded by people who are way over your head quickly becomes frustrating. You've got to find that perfect balance point between boredom and frustration. But it's true—being pushed up a little bit is a lot of fun, and being pulled down is a bit of a drag.

So I think a large part of the sudden fun factor at this particular jam is that it's the perfect level for me now. I struggle and have to work hard to keep up and not only figure out what the fuck is going on in terms of chords and melody, and also try to keep doing new or interesting things and not fall back on the same licks over and over, but I can still hold my shit together enough to occasionally sound good. If I do say so myself. I.e. I'm finally approaching the level where I'm feeling like I'm contributing a bit rather than strictly just trying to keep up. It's a fucking good feeling.

Anyways, the core of the group is a couple really talented and really musical guitar players with a huge repetoire (many of them have been playing for thirty or fourty years) of swing, old country, and (of course) bluegrass. And what's nice is that they're really appreciative of me—even though I'm just playing the same three Chubby Wise licks is various combinations they are always complimentary. (I think this is partly because the other fiddles there are much more old-timey-based, so the more bluesy stuff (which is what Chubby Wise essentially defined the bluegrass fiddle sound as doing) is a nice change.) So I'm happy because it seems like a year and a half of solid effort on ol' Petunia is starting to pay off.

So the whole point of this post was to relate an anecdote. Someone there asked me last night how I learned to play bluegrass, and I said that I basically listened to a lot of old Bill Monroe records, figured out what Chubby Wise was doing, and started trying to build breaks around his licks. And then they were like, "Oh, so you like Chubby Wise?" and I was like "Yes, even though he was not the most technically sophisticated fiddler to have ever played bluegrass (e.g. he only used three fingers of his left hand) he did define the bluegrass fiddle sound and also, he just sounded fucking great" and they were like, Well Larry there was a good friend of Chubby Wise and I was like Holy shit there Larry and we talked a little bit about him.

The moral of the story is that bluegrass is great. You're never more than one or two people away from your heroes.

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                Not shaking the grass.

            — Ezra Pound

Funny.

Here's what would make me happy.

1. A few good friends, who I could sit down and chat with over a pot of tea. The Chinese tea ceremony is (like many things Chinese) much more pragmatic and fun than the Japanese ceremony (友朋自遠方來 and all that), but it does require a friend to chat with.
2. A bit of free time to read about interesting things.
3. A way to sate my raging creative urge.

I think that's it.

• Capitalization—you can eschew without compunction, unless you really want to be formal. Mixing modes, however, is confusing and wrong. If you don't capitalize the first letter of the sentence, don't capitalize names or I. If you do, then do.
• Spacing after the period—just one. Two spaces looks gross and is a great way to mark yourself relic of the typewriter age. French spacing, if so desired, is best done by the recipient's MUA.
• Indenting the first line of paragraphs—same as with French spacing. Don't.
• The dash—use three dashes for an m dash, two for an n-dash (numerical ranges), and one for hyphenation. Thus LaTeX commands and thus we obey.
• Emoticons—feel free.
• URLs—don't exceed 72 characters and definitely don't split across lines. Use tinyurl.com if necessary.
• Top-posting—there's no better way to mark yourself as incompetent. Just stop doing it. Excerpt the original text and put your reply on the bottom. Strip off signatures and cruft. (Also, this is the only way to stop an exchange of any non-trivial length from becoming completely unintelligible.)
• BTW, FWIW, AFAIK—go for it, but capitalize only if you're capitalizing in general.
• Quoting—just do it, and do it with a single greater-than following by a single space.
• Width—set your MUA to wrap at 72 characters.

Thus spake the prophet.

Despite what you may have learned in grammar school (ho ho!), let it be know that the following rules are hereby declared null and void:

1. Split infinitives. There's a lot to be said about why worrying about this is useless, and I'm not going to repeat it (but see, e.g., thealt.usage.english FAQ), but suffice it to say you should focus on making your writing clear and readable, and that's usually orthogonal and occasionally in conflict with the split/not split consideration.
2. Ending a sentence with a preposition. Perfectly ok, for the same reasons.
3. Whom. Just don't use it. The original usage rules are so complex that you're almost guaranteed to fuck up, so just be a sport and help me remove this beast from popular usage.

It looks like, thanks to

I think I must've finally completely emerged from this last fit of depression, because I feel the urge to write here again.

Hold on tight.

sigh.