Author: thisduck

boxed thought and zen guitar

I recently finished reading ‘Zen Guitar’. I think it’s a great book. It’s not about how to technically play the guitar. It has no songs or notes. It’s about the approach, how one should play the guitar, how one should approach playing the guitar. But really, it doesn’t apply to just playing a guitar, it applies to anything at all. It applies to life.

A few reviews on Amazon have described the book as having “profound wisdom”. Although, if you think about it for a while, this profound wisdom is mostly just common sense, or what should be common sense. But we have boxes in our brains, our thoughts are boxed. Our minds are full of boxed patterns that have been ingrained by our societies and our education system. Common sense has no place amongst boxed thought.

Our thoughts are boxed. When I say “boxed” I don’t mean hidden or concealed, no. I mean the shape, the pattern. Our thoughts are boxed. “Think outside the box”, someone will say, and then feel clever. “Everyone is thinking outside the box now, we should think inside the box”, someone else will say, feeling even cleverer. Boxed thought. Inside or outside. No one tells us to think inside/outside spheres, cones or pyramids. We’re all boxed up instead (I now feel I’ve trumped everyone in cleverness).

Common sense helps us see new patterns, it helps us see the other shapes. If you fill up a room with cubes, there is no room for other shapes. And thus, common sense seems profound, and it should. It helps to see common sense in printed text, in audio or in friends’ encouragement. We’ve been trained against common sense, so we need to train ourselves to accept it.

Zen Guitar is full of profound common sense. I would recommend it to everyone. It applies to everyone and anything they would do. It’s one of those books I would buy multiple copies of, just so I could lend it out to multiple people at the same time. It’s a short book and an easy read. I particularly liked the sections on rhythm, collaboration, ego, competition and criticism.

I’m going to post excerpts from the book now.

On rhythm: <blockquote>
I often hear people say they have no natural rhythm. This is false. Anyone with a heartbeat has rhythm. Anyone who breathes in and breathes out has rhythm. Anyone who walks has rhythm. The important thing is to feel it and put it in your music.
</blockquote>

On self-doubt: <blockquote>
All you can ever do here is be yourself and play your song. If you ask, “But will it be good enough to play Carnegie Hall or the Village Vanguard or Budokan?” you are blind to the Way. A bird does not ask, “Is my song pretty?” Just make a joyful noise.
</blockquote>

On overthinking: <blockquote>
Do not analyze things to death. Sometimes the best strategy is, “Ready, fire, aim.” Do it first, then make adjustments. The answer lies in action – not in words.
</blockquote>

random guitar

so i was just playing with the guitar the other day and decided to try something other than my daily ‘happy birthday’ routine.

after about two seconds of thought, i figured i’d post it on the blog. i didn’t bother editing the sound clip, it’s 4 minutes long, and somewhere in there is a tune somewhere.

link to mp3 random guitar

[audio:http://wwwjaaduhai.com/guitar/randomguitar.mp3]

magnets

This is from a couple of months ago at work. I was in the kitchen getting a tea refill, being careful not to get burnt, when I noticed word magnets on the fridge. These magnets were part of some wedding vows package, you were supposed to make wedding vows with these words. I found the fridge in this state:

all the words

I decided I would play this game. So put arranged a few magnets in this order:

joy us, sad me

One of my co-workers/friends who was caught a glimpse of this came by and said, “that’s some deep shit”. Then she modified it to:

have wife, sad me

So I said, “whoa, wait a minute!”:

have husband, sad me

Laughter ensued. I continued:

work time, sad me

And then:

soul poorer, sad me

“Deep shit”, she said again. I kept going:

we poorer, sad me

“Not bad, but you’re losing steam”… Oh is that right? take this:

marry me, sad we

“Hahahaha”, much laughter again.

Then a few weeks later, I thought I’d give it another go. This time:

Wait… let’s try this:

Okay, what about this:

One more time:

“Hmmm… needs more cowbell”, I thought, forgetting to take the tea back with me to my desk.

my greatest trick

sometimes i wish i would just face that fear,
but don’t we all have our bones to pick?
though sometimes i wish i could just disappear,
would that not be my greatest trick?

but i want to be here, there’s much to see,
moments i have not yet met.
i think if i would just share more of me,
that would be my greatest effect.

thoughts on magic and music

I can play a rusty ‘happy birthday’ on the guitar now. It’s fairly simple, nothing too complicated. Holding the guitar and playing a few notes, I can already begin to feel a similarity to when I started with magic. Get a deck of cards, tune it, then practise. This is the same with a guitar.

It takes time, you develop muscle memory and you just go. You forget all the details about finger positioning and think about other things, but when you start, it’s the details of the technique that you concentrate on. There’s always this urge to learn more and more, when really you only need to get down (perfect?) a few basic moves. Again, this applied to both magic and music.

Persistence, it takes persistence. Lots of it. There’s no other way around it, there is no instant gratification. Anyone can pluck a string and spread a deck, but not everyone can do it in a smooth and beautiful fashion, that takes time.

It’s interesting how there are similarities in practising, but differences in the performances and the reactions. I feel that music has the ability to go/last beyond the author/creator, more so than magic. Also the creators of magic are often looking for a shock value, and the shock value lasts that one time. On the other hand, with music and songs, you can hear them over and over to get that effect. With most magic it’s a one time thing, but it need not be. Often you’ll hear magicians talking about how their trick will fool people. If you want to fool people, you probably will, but so what? Instead magic effects (not tricks), like music, should be about sharing something beautiful. So instead of creating magic with the idea of fooling someone, magic ought to be created on the basis of beauty and rhythm. Which is why I love reading essays about magic by Ascanio and Juan Tamariz.

Most magicians don’t create their own effects, instead they learn what other magicians have done. This is fine, I have no issues with this. Often you will end up putting something of yourself into the effect, making it yours in ways. I suppose this is what good singers do with songs as well. I haven’t devised many magic routines of my own, just a few. There’s only one that I do on a regular basis. That routine came about when I was doing flourishes on the RT and a few people asked me to do some magic for them. I had no idea what I was going to do, even as I asked them to pick a card. I just went with the flow, piecing bits of magic together to arrive at an actual routine. I like how that worked out. Like musicians, magicians also have jam sessions.

Anyway, it seems like I’ll be spending quite a bit of time with the guitar. Also, watch this space for more happy birthday related material (bollywood style). =P