Monthly Archives: October 2014

Talent, Skill & Enthusiasm, part I — “Drop-D”

by in Luminous Aether, Music | 3 Comments

It was in 1990 that I first bought a 12-string guitar, emulating a popular singer who also played an ES-335, 12-string. My fascination with her was more than simply aesthetic, although her pleasantly soft voice and spontaneous smiles emerging from beneath trademark bright red-orange hair certainly appealed to my happier instincts. But it was something else about this almost self-contradictory, cheerful-British singer and guitarist that had touched a chord of sorts.

Access to the creation of music always seemed frustratingly inaccessible during my childhood. Despite an interest, hand surgery had left me struggling with the family’s mandatory piano lessons — until at the age of ten, a regrettably ill-considered act of rebellion committed with a pair of scissors brought an abrupt end to them. In later years, I would become interested in other instruments. But it always seemed terribly disingenuous to petition for support after having inflicted such lethal grief upon the household’s beautiful old butterfly-grand.

Banging away on the drums would suffice during high school, though an acoustic guitar made a discrete appearance for a couple of years. But the same hand that had hindered progress on the piano proved even more debilitating on a guitar. And perhaps due to a reluctance to ask for guidance, it never occurred to do a Jimi Hendrix and simply flip the thing over. But some of the first serious female rock musicians were starting to break through the glass ceiling during that time — Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders — and that kept me trying.

Eventually, it inspired an attempt at playing an electric guitar with a friend’s garage band. A fifteen-minute course in “power chords,” and I was plugged into a massively loud, 150 Watt, Peavey “Bandit” amplifier. It was probably a good thing the garage walls were lined with old mattresses. It was dreadful. Later that night, the acoustic quietly disappeared into the darkened corner of a closet — although I would return to abuse the band’s drums a few more times before going off to college.

It was during that time when one of my house-mates brought home a CD of a British pop band, “Lush.” With song titles such as “Sweetness and Light” seeming rather more saccharin-syrupy than my usual listening habits accommodated, it didn’t attract my attentions… until my roommate commented, “You know, the lead singer is half-Japanese.” That was Miki Berenyi, the red-orange haired girl with the precocious smile and a 12-string guitar. And so, I ended up with a second-hand, Carvin DC-120.

The Carvin was actually a pretty nice guitar. But why I thought that playing a 12-string would be somehow less frustrating than a 6, I have no idea. I stuck to the drums with the (mostly) all-girl, (mostly) power-trio formed with a couple of college friends during that time, although I kept working at the old Carvin for several more years. Eventually, however, grad work absorbed too much time to commit any more to such distractions as trying to make music. And a few years later, the Carvin was simply given away.

A guitar wouldn’t significantly re-enter my consciousness until close to a decade later, while living in Japan. A friend introduced me to Tokyo’s massive and thriving, underground (often, literally) music scene.Featured image  Latching on to a hardcore-punk band with female lead and bass guitarists who regularly pulled small crowds of mostly male (often American) listeners, the two women eventually noticed a familiar, female face in the audience.

Late one night over a couple of izakaya beers, the band’s guitarist explained how she had dropped out of music college to join the group some five-year earlier. Discreetly revealing a rather un-Japanese tattoo on her shoulder depicting a mermaid playing a ukulele, she jested that she was married to her beloved Gibson SG, but that her spouse was poorly paid and spent all of her money. I replied that I admired her courage to pursue a passion, and that no one was going to pay to hear anything that my sorry fingers could liberate from a fretboard.

At that, she reached across the table and pulled my hand toward her, extending my index finger. “Drop-D… Tune the low-E down to a D,” she explained. “One finger power-chords. Why do you think I quit music school?”

She was most certainly a far more skilled guitarist than she was letting on, but the point was made. Art, as with life, is realized by using whatever we have available to ourselves in whatever ways we can. The study of those notes on the old family piano was intended only to evoke an understanding of the workings of a discipline, not necessarily how it would be made to work for myself. And barring such as the malicious application of scissors, any physical outcome would indeed have mattered far less than the resultant power of a creative command.

A few years later, I would return to the US with a Japanese “ESP” electric guitar, and later discover that my mother had kept the old acoustic from my high school days. My izakaya muse and her band would go on to become fairly well-known in the Japanese underground circuit, and eventually make several tours of the US before their bassist would leave to have a baby. Now she plays with a new group — four industriously exuberant women who can still get an audience jumping. And I continue to admire her spirit.

The old acoustic still gets played, though mostly in private due to its uncomfortably honest sound. And the ESP has acquired some company over the years, including a pretty nice 12-string. Most recently, a gorgeous black “FujiGen,” strangely reminiscent of that magnificent instrument lost to the unbridled frustrations of my childhood, would return with me from Japan.  The misty eyes it evoked in a Shibuya music store would bewilder a helpful employee.

Physical talent isn’t something I can change, and that can still result in moments of disappointment. Acquired skill and enthusiasm can only accomplish so much by themselves, although perseverance has resulted in several things I once thought beyond the reach of my rather less-than-perfect hand. And even Miki Berenyi, for whom it was more about the adventure of artistic creativity, would eventually state that she was “…never a proper guitarist.”

Of course, the neighbors may still wish I’d put some mattresses against the walls. But at least it isn’t because I’m hitting the wrong notes. I cut the strings on my guitars one at a time, carefully, and only when they need replacing. And I generally keep that FujiGen tuned drop-D.

Artifacts

by in Japan, War | 2 Comments

“Yajiri” (矢尻) or “yanone” (矢の根) refer to Japanese arrowheads. For a short period earlier in my life, I collected them.

Featured image

“A Medieval Japanese Archer,” from a Frank Leslie’s Illustrated magazine, 1888.

Archers were the core of Japanese military strategy for well over one-thousand years. “Shagaei,” or military expertise in archery was basic to the skill set of any soldier in feudal Japan, even long after the firearms enforced peace of the country’s Edo-period. Even today, the art of Japanese archery remains in the form of the discipline known as “kyūdō.”

As with the better known Japanese “katana,” or long swords, the production of arrowheads during Japan’s feudal eras was the domain of expert metalworkers. Even fairly mass-produced points were the result of skilled and thorough craftsmanship, and individual arrowheads were often signed by their creators. This was not done merely as an act of ego, but as a mark of personal responsibility for their use and for their effectiveness in battle.

Many were designed for very specific military purposes, such as to cause bleeding, to penetrate armor, to bring down calvary, to fall from above, or to create fear. Some, more ornate points were merely ceremonial objects, bestowed as gifts, or mounted on arrows intended for symbolic or spiritual purposes. However, most were created with the sole intent of inflicting mortal injury upon other humans, and these were what I collected.

Recently examining one, the mark of a long dead, early Edo-era craftsman is carefully inscribed into a finely polished point intended to penetrate the armor of an enemy soldier. Another, slighter different form by another maker bears the same family name, and a similarly accomplished style of workmanship. What was it that inspired such dedication as to spend lifetimes laboring to create countless such exquisitely hand-crafted artifacts of warfare?

These inscribed symbols representing the traditions of entire families speak of an absolute commitment carved literally into steel. Their marks were the testimonies of generations devoted to the loyal defense of a way of life for their own people. In this way, they represented the bushi spirit of the “samurai,” the honored feudal warriors who would epitomize many centuries of Japanese society.  But even this steeled commitment to a philosophy of absolute sacrifice to the rallying battle-cry of a culture could not overcome the inevitable encroachment of progress.

While these products of skills passed down for generations were being forged, the way of life that justified their creation was already dying. The soldiers whom they would confront fought with new technologies, such as the archebus, matchlock muskets that made expertise in archery as applied to the destruction of human lives an anachronism. A long honored code-of-ethics based in centuries of feudal civilization was, for better or for worse, coming to an end.

These polished bits of carefully-formed steel would remain pristine because they were as obsolete as the culture they were so solemnly intended to protect. They would never see the opportunity to be flung toward an enemy, either to find the heart of a worthy foe, or to lay rusting on a field of battle. Instead, they would end their lives quietly, coming to rest in the far away hands of a barely-comprehending collector of mere artifacts.

Enlightenment in a Cup

by in Cambodia | 4 Comments

The coffee was jet-black, overcooked and grimy, oozing in slow drips from the bottom of a dented metal French filter. It fell in heavy, black pearls onto an inch-thick mass of syrupy sweet condensed milk, where it floated like an oil-slick on old snow. A tall glass of ice stood patiently beside, gradually losing its battle with the Phnom Penh heat.

IFeatured imaget was the makings of “cà-phê sūa đá,” the French-influenced, Vietnamese Coffee-of-the-Gods. As with “matcha,” the ground green tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies, the coffee by itself would have required some measure of enteric fortitude to keep down. But the addition of a generous quantity of otherwise sickeningly sweetened reduced milk, and meltwater resulting from both the Cambodian heat and dumping the mixture over what was left of the awaiting ice would react magically to create a form suitable for mere mortals.

This was the gift of mornings spent at a little table in a street-side, ethnic Vietnamese family’s restaurant, sipping a bowl of soup while liquid Nirvana dripped to a slow beat into a water-spotted glass. So it was a welcomed tip when a friend recently suggested a place where I could again experience this wonderful substance, at another Vietnamese family restaurant in a nearby city. Ordering a lunch there, I mentioned the coffee to my server, an elder Vietnamese gentleman who wanted to be absolutely certain that he (and I) fully understood what was being ordered.

This time, the little French-filter sat on a coffee cup and looked considerably less worn, and the ice rather less melted by the time I had finished my meal. But eventually removing the filter revealed that familiar, over-saturated, asphalty liquid, just waiting to be stirred into a ridiculously sugary base. Then the whole mass was poured over the awaiting ice before being carefully returned to its cup.

The very first sip left me awash with memories. And whether it was the result of such sudden rememberings, the sugar buzz, or just the sudden jolt from all that concentrated caffeine, I can’t say. But I could feel the tears welling into my eyes as the benevolent Gods of Southeast Asian Coffee again touched my spirit.

A stiflingly hot day, sugary canned milk, a tall glass of rapidly disappearing ice, and a slowly produced layer of grossly over-refined coffee — all flawed things come together in one moment of wondrous reciprocity. Vietnamese coffee as an analogy for life, evidence to a method of error-correction by synthesis, the bringing together of complimentary imperfections to create something intangibly wonderful.

I’ll be back to this place again, the next time I need a reminder just how good life really is — even a flawed life among flawed lives. Coffee as enlightenment, well worth the Hamilton left tucked under an emptied cup.