Ok, I know when we left off I was just leaving for the army, but you’ll have to forgive me as I’m going to start by taking it back a few ticks first. Trying to balance between chronological telling and effective/efficient splitting up of the sections is tough work, I don’t know how writers do it.
I grew up around music. My dad studied teaching and music in college, and served in various army bands for over thirty years. Back when we lived in Virginia Beach, he and my mom had a cover bad called Aurora. I remember them playing songs like Black Velvet and Walk the Dinosaur, both during their regular practice sessions at home and as I dug for sand crabs during their beach front gigs.
It was around the age of 16 that I first picked up a guitar. I went to enough lessons to learn a few chords, and a few exercises to help me practice transitioning between them…I figured that would be enough to keep me busy for a few years, so I quit lessons and focused on playing chords like the back of my hand. I kept at that until I could read them on paper and play them without guessing or faltering. This took 4-5 years, but the practice carried me through those lonely years in Maryland.
In the army, on our first tour (Baghdad), my friend Yukmouth bought a nylon stringed guitar from a local shop. He wasn’t my friend at the time, but we became friends when we found this common interest. I played a few chords on it and knew my soul needed the music back. I bought one also, next time we passed that shop.
I was the king of the shitpile for a few months. Everyone loved to sit and listen to me play chords and strum out melodies, until one day a medical sergeant from a visiting company came by. One of my guys came running to get me - “You have to hear this guy man, he’s awesome!” It was like the Eagles’ New Kid in Town. When I came into the room he was playing Don McLean’s American Pie, and everyone was enamored…I knew I’d have to learn to sing if I were going to take this guitar anywhere, so I started practicing, trying to build up the nerve to do it in front of people.
Yukmouth and I formed an acoustic punk rock band. We named it after the cartoon alligator on the rice crispy treats his wife at the time used to send him. We called ourselves Gary CoolGator and the Suckafrees.
We sang songs about all kinds of things, but mostly we just tried to make the other guys laugh. Yukmouth encouraged me to get loud. He was a really great friend, and I never would have known the love of music to the extent that I do, had it not been for him.
I moved to Lawrence, Kansas when I got out of the army, where I played with a band called Running From Roscoe (me and one other member had come from Maryland. It was not a political statement, just a clever name, but Roscoe Bartlett was a senator or something at the time).
Eventually the band fell apart and I ended up moving back to Maryland with the love who is now my wife.
I played at Applebee’s once a month for a while for like $100 a pop. It was pretty nice but I guess I just lost interest after a while…I quit playing music for a few years and enjoyed other things.
In December of 2019, after hiking sections 7 & 8 of the Pennsylvania Appalachian Trail and reading the first couple Castaneda books, the intuition told me I needed to play heart music; music that has no lyric, no goal, just melodies that flow from the heart. After much reflection, I knew I was to play the flute.
My first flute was a High Spirits Earth Tone flute. It was beautiful and played really beautifully, but the design of the Native American Flute made it susceptible to building up condensation in the flue, having a negative impact on sounds quality. To get around this, I started playing the quena because of its simple design.
The quena is a straight flute from the Andean mountains, it has no bird/fetish, just an embouchure on a straight pipe - you can play it all day in any weather. I loved the quena as soon as I started making sound from it, and I didn’t want to have to choose which one to play each time I wanted to play heart music, so I sold my Native American Flute and played quena exclusively until 2021.
This year, I found myself missing the haunting tones of the Native American Flute, and I tracked down a few new ones so I could reclaim that joy. Some of you may have seen a flute or two from my collection :)
Now, as I attempt to walk that razor’s edge that is a life of balance, I try to make time for all my instruments. Music has brought laughter, joy, challenge and peace to my heart and soul over the years, and I’m grateful to have a home on the Hive blockchain for sharing that.
Playing my cousin’s wedding with my mom and dad
Sometime in Kansas, after the army
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