My bass player friend and the boat he built for me.

My bass player friend has leukemia: blood cancer. It came on so quickly and it has become acute. He said yesterday, "It doesn't look good." So this morning I sat in my studio/ office and looked at my amps and guitars and wondered when I'll stop believing I'll live forever. Right now I still believe this because my not being just isn't imaginable. Oh, I can see the empty seat in my studio. I can see that someone will someday walk into my studio and look at my accumulations and shake their head, "What did he do with all this stuff?" I loved it. I played it. I let it take me along, up and down, in and out, in and through, down and through, up and through: Through until I am through. I hope my friend sat with his instruments and amps and song lists and remembered the wonder piled deeply in the cold tubes and wood and strings. That's where the wonder sleeps until we wake it into a gig. So, it doesn't look good. And I am shaken and sad. In honor of what is, I will get ready for my next gig. What is, is. What is not, is not. God is.

Vintage MXR micro amp

Vintage, I looked up the definition. Enduring appeal appealed to me. So I walk into Ricks Gun and Pawn in Foley. There's a guy playing an ovation. He's got some pretty good chops. He wears a woven rope headband slightly off center. He might be 25, hair braided in a bunch of those small braids like you can get when you're on a cruise stopped at the last "private" island, with beads. I pick up an Epiphone bass made in Korea, $119.00. We talk. His friend girl stares at me. I put the bass up and go talk to Christina. She and her brother Bryan shoot pool as a team. I see behind her several stomp boxes. I ask to see them and the very last one I check out is a well worn mxr micro amp. I don't know what it does. I take it over to an amp and try it out. Seems to be a clean boost with some comp and a little twinkle on the highs. I like. The price says $14.95. "What's your best price on this?" $12 out the door. "It doesn't have a light and no way to plug it in. You have to use a battery. I'll give you $10." Christina grins. She loves to play this game. She knows she's going to win because she knows I'm going to buy the thing. "I'll split the difference, $11." I take it home and clean it and love it. Yesterday on Ebay a guy sold a 1978 MXR Micro Amp for $282. I asked him how to date one. He told me. Mines a 1979. He worked for MXR in 1978 - 79. In September 1979, he told me, MXR began building prototypes with lights and power input. So there you go. Pawn shop gold: Eureka!

Harmony meaning and the question "What is life for?"

What is life for? I believe Wendell Berry poses that question in a poem. I found the question embedded in a discussion of theology, specifically the theology of the cross, and within that, a discussion of Jesus' work and our human predicament of trying to work out the meaning of our lives. I believe there is no one to answer the question, "what is life for?" There is no expert to tell me or you the answer to this question. There are small groups of us working on it. The question poses an "adaptive challenge" (Google Ron Heifetz). "What is life for?" You can rule out nothing. You can rule in anything that doesn't lead to cruelty or result in cruelty to any part of creation. (I'm borrowing this idea from Reynolds Price.) My Harmony Meteor and I and my jam band will enjoin this question tomorrow night. The experience will be episodic and yet, not without continuity to both past and future. I will come away from our jam with immeasurable satisfaction, because I took part and the meaning will be made with the Harmony Meteor and the other old guys and our memories which is what life is for, the making of memory.

Making Harmony

Someone installed a new bridge on the Harmony Meteor. I discovered last night that it must be in exactly the right place to make for correct intonation. I loosened the strings and moved its little plastic feet into the spots they have tattooed into the old finish. When I did, intonation was perfect up and down the fret. Do you suppose we have a bridge that some force can move just enough to throw our intonation off? I tuned the strings with an analog tuner. The tuner said "perfect". Then I played a chord: way off. And the more I moved around the neck, the worse the intonation problem. Hum. I told someone today that other people's problems often become my problems. I also said, "When I head in this direction, I need to get back to working the steps." The 12 steps of AA work for me when I work them. Its like carefully repositioning the bridge so every fret makes Harmony with every other fret.