Poignant

We don't know what love is.  We don't have it defined very well and our attempts at it are a shambles because we have not embraced our sentient loving state yet.  

The human race can only conceive of loving itself when the component of love between individuals is fulfilled.  More precisely still, we can only learn to love the human race, or any individual, once we love ourselves.  This is precisely where men have inadvertently, unwillingly dropped the ball.  They cannot love themselves until the male gender learns real confidence in itself and gains real self-respect.  Right now, they are only playing a confidence game.  That is a hate-filled game.  It is a prehuman stunt to act like a human rather than be one.  I hope you begin to see what a terrible journey I have taken in order to thrash through three thousand years of an animal's gibberish and growling.

I have to be thankful for that last paragraph.  My goal has been to define the human, make it possible for humanity to become human.  I am content.  It all makes sense to an extent that can lead to humanity becoming human. 

 This makes sense considering what I have mentioned regarding self-validation, self-respect, etc.  The definition of love, as it is viewed today, is kind of clingy.  And, yes, my dear, as usual, the insight is via you.  Love cannot stand the tests of time unless one loves oneself.

I have to wonder if love is defined even more radically different.  I don't know if I need to write more to explain.  At least, I would expect, that if my Lady is reading this, she will get it.  The more I think about it, the more I am convinced it is like every fiber of her being is composed of love.  It explains the all-consuming rage and love.  Come to think of it, just like myself.  She senses at a fundamental level that love is all-encompassing but not in the way that everyone plays at it.  It is maybe only in its intuitive state.  Just as it has been for me.  It's hard to tell since she remains only a mirage on the horizon.  I can see it clearly but I cannot interact.

An Amazing Time

I've finally begun to understand music.  It's amazing.  What I have been missing for seven decades is an ear for music, which kinda astounds me, since I love music and listen to it virtually all the time.

I am finally acquiring an ear as I finally get over the mania of a lifetime.  Not you, my dear.  The other one.

 All of it is beginning to fall in place. The tuning device, guitar, and piano all played their part in tuning my ear.  The piano provides a fairly accurate note, the guitar lets you learn to tune in to a note, and the tuning device that I hook on the end of my guitar refines the ear further (hmmm, gotta try it on the piano).  All have helped my ear now that I have time to pay attention.

Kinda the same with the rest of the necessary musical learnings.  I had to, then, hear notes.  Then chords. Then songs and creating music and songs.

Since I've picked away at the guitar all my life, it's the best vehicle for this exploration.  Now, I'm up to picking out the chords in a song (often with a chord chart (that is not always right)), which are much more of a pain because they don't all fit anywhere you like in the song so well.

Let me explain my approach to, well, damn near everything.  I just don't trust a single thing that I am told.  At best, it's a short cut.  That may be okay for some learnings but something remains missing.  I won't do that with anything dear to me.  I learned that lesson early and it was reinforced almost every day of my life.  There is only one exception and that is you, my dear.  Somehow, I don't know how to explain it, but you ring like a chime through me.  It began, of course, with listening to you, which shook me to the ground.  You probably know which song it was.  Then, the expressiveness ... well, I've talked about the rest ad nauseam elsewhere.  You just make perfect sense to me.

Back to music.  I don't much care for the educational setup of prehumanity.  It is great for training Pavlov's Dog but not a human.

I like the scores and scale of notes.  Something worth learning.  Kinda necessary with a piano.

It bugs me that most sites that provide guitar chords (unlike a score) seldom mention the scale in which the music has been written.

I do like the guitar chord summary sites a lot.  But, I don't want the song written out for me when I am fooling around with listening to the song while trying to play along.  I just want the chord summary.  Anything more would cross the boundary into rote.

Chords are new to my exploration.  It is a more complex sound than a single note.  So, I have had to learn to listen to the sound of the chords I play and the sound of the chords being played in the song and make them match.  I have a new song for my epitaph but it falls far short of the mark.  I might have to add some lyrics.  "Gypsy soul" by Van Morrison.

I break down the songs into those I desperately want to play on guitar and those that are just knockout, drop-dead good music that I would love to learn.  Then I have a playlist that started with about 5,000 (all) of the songs currently in residence.  I delete the songs that just absolutely annoy me in that playlist.

With the most special list of songs (only like two or three, right now), I acquire the chords from a site.  I play along with the song, picking out the notes and trying to make the sound of the chords match the music being played.  In both cases, it is very random but it works.  I have figuring out the five key notes that fit easily when playing lead guitar down to a few seconds, even for new songs.  I'm just starting to feel like I've reached a similar plateau for chords.  I am starting to hear where they belong.

It's weird and I have yet to come up with an explanation but, for every song, there are five notes that just work.  They fit.  In many cases, they fit so well that you can play any of those five notes at any point in the song and it sounds right.  I know there are (only typically?) seven notes to a scale (no, I haven't gone and looked if there are other variations with more or less notes. I'm pretty sure there are)..

    Do you see?  Do you see what I bypass by not just learning by rote?  By not being 'told' the way it works, I am free to explore the boundaries that most are taught to just accept (had the same trouble with physics, now that I think about it; I'd love to get into that but no one would be interested).

Oh!  A little more on music that I don't want to forget to mention.  What I have never even considered in the slightest was writing a song.  I'm awful good at putting pen to paper (electronic version of) for poetry, but the thought of attempting to write a song completely blew me out of the water.  I couldn't even conceive the thought.  How in the world??!!?

Bang!  Got it.  I used to go so far as to wonder if the music or the words had to come first.  I think the actual answer is both, from the learning experiences from poetry.  For me, though, it became crystal clear.  I, at least, have to start with the music.  In some ways, that is because I do not entirely understand how it all fits together yet.  Part of making a song is making music that sounds good, the notes fit.  For me, the words are the easy part.  I finally realized, the words will drop into slots once the music is down pat.  In other words, I have to screw around with notes and chords and begin to learn how to put them together without the template of an existing song.  Kinda have to see what happens.  With so many brilliant examples of music surrounding me, I'm not too concerned with going off into the weeds.  Maybe  just a little bit off the path to do some exploring, now and then.

I prefer getting the rote after I have made my own thorough exploration through a journey of innocence (see Emotional Landscape in A Sentient Perspective (website, not book; it is a subchapter in Crisis of Identity; which I will never publish as a book)) that can take decades, in some cases.  I don't know if I will ever get to the point of chasing rote with poetry or music.  I doubt it.  There is a sentient purity about both that rote would just tarnish.

That reminds me of a friend that once told me how she didn't want to go commercial with her music.  With a passion like that?  Why would anyone avoid making a living out of their passion?  Oh, I get it.  The brute impedes.  But, to live your passion?  The extraneous forces can be regulated, to some extent, if you are sharp.  It may be painful along the way, but the end result should be worth it.  Otherwise, you end up in a hole pulling the ground in around you.  It should be easier to pursue, especially for the awesome gender that has been so mistreated down through the ages, as we become human.

I am soooo worried this is going to sound crazy.  I'm getting to that age where I have to monitor everything I do.  That is difficult when trying to convey thoughts.  Does that phrase I just cooked up even make sense as an analogy? metaphor?, as an example.

Well, I could rattle on more but, I assure you, it would ramble and digress like an out-of-control freight train.

Not yet edited, to speak of.