No Fingertip Sensation

Originally, when I started this blog, I wanted to revolve around the universal theme of making entries about personal lists. As with my first two posts, I have kept true to this idea. It's quite apparent, however, that I have a very strong passion for music, travel, technological evolution and, most importantly, experience.

Today I would like to write about my experience over the past week of re-learning to play the guitar, how technological evolution has helped make me better at it and why this compliments my love for music today.

I started playing the guitar when I was about 11. I had two guitars passed down to me by my Mom and Dad. The first few songs I ever learned were Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel and Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. Thank you Mom for teaching me these songs, folk rock will always have a special place in my heart because of this. Mind you, in those days despite my hands being too short for bar chords, these two songs I learned were plucked* and not strummed.

I continued playing guitar well until high school. Many afternoons were spent locked in my room singing my soul out to Guns N Roses, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots until my fingertips were hard and calloused. Although we had internet pretty early in my house, the world wide web did not have a lot of reference to guitar how-tos and tabs for those who were trying to learn. So most of the time I learned new songs through a) other friends b) listening to the track over and over 'til I got it or something close to it c) guitar and music magazines and finally....wait for it...d) the dreaded, probably 60% erroneous, song hits! Eventually my interest faded as I got distracted by other interests like climbing mountains, writing, art, watching plays, and scouting for the best thrift finds. Music-wise, I instead settled for discovering new artists, watching live bands and, at some point, even became a band aid (you know, the free spirits who aid to inspire the music for the musician).

Over the past week, however, I decided to pick up the guitar again and try to learn how to play new songs. I started with something easy: Fleet Foxes' Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. The chords were pretty straight-forward and learning how to play it did not pose as much a challenge as memorizing the lyrics so I could sing along while playing. But over the weekend I decided to be intrepid and try something that offered a bit of a challenge. I decide on Street Spirit by Radiohead. It's short song, I'm extremely familiar with it, plus it involves plucking, so I decided it should be a perfect challenge. Boy, did I not walk in the park with this one. More than once during the course of learning this song did I want to throw my guitar and smash it against the wall!

Earlier this month I made a list of a few things I wouldn't mind taking up which included: a racket sport, basic cooking classes, art classes (specifically sculpting), and music lessons. The great thing about today's accessibility to almost anything because of the internet is that you can rid yourself of paying for the lessons part because almost everything can be learned via the world wide web. In my case, guitar lessons were learned through youtube. Thank you weird, oily haired French dude who uploaded the tutorial video of the song. It took a lot of practice, but I am rockin this one now!

Although I would like to learn newer songs, I am starting with the ones that I always wanted to learn how to play but never got to because (a) the tuning of the guitar was not the E standard and I didn't know any other way to tune a guitar, (b) too complicated to listen to and try to figure out by yourself, or (c) no chords or tabs can be found. These obsticles today are easily solved by (a) the awesome iTunes Chromatic Tuner downloadable totally free at apple.com (b) again, youtube.com tutorials ROCK, and (c) almost any tab for any song can be found online, there are loads of websites that are solely dedicated to archiving guitar tablature.

So this week I plan to learn (a) Rain Song by Led Zeppelin since I can finally tune the guitar to anything I want, (b) Mouth Full of Cavities by Blind Melon because youtube offers great tutorials and (c) Last Goodbye by Jeff Buckley for the same reasons as a&b.

I don't know how long this yearning to learn how to play songs on the guitar will last. But, if anything, the experience of testing your patience, keeping the discipline to continue practicing, developing your muscle memory and having the sense of achievement when you finally perfect what you've been working on is good enough for me. You never know, I may evolve into making my own music and writing my own songs...

One thing's for sure, though: I will never post any videos of myself playing the guitar or any other sort online.

*Guitar plucking or finger picking is a method of playing the guitar where you use your thumb and fingers to pick or pluck notes and creates a more melodous sound.

A Little Gloom + Music + the Road = Good Times

I have always loved the rain.  Specially the ones that start just before dawn.  Days like these, you open your eyes to a dark and gloomy morning and automatically snuggle deeper into your bed covers.  I'd describe the feeling I'd get waking up to these mornings as the same feeling I'd have when I eat comfort food.

Today was one of those days.  Despite the flood alerts and the hassle of heavier traffic, I am in a good mood.  My preference has always leaned towards the gloomier seasons.  Maybe that's why I've always liked the rain and is absolutely in love with winter.  

I always travel during winter time and actually prefer it.  Not only do you need to pack a lot less clothing as you rarely sweat during this season, but airfares, room rates, food and all things that involve travel are essentially at "off-peak" prices.  I think my eclectic taste and extreme love for music naturally always accompanies my travels.  Allowing yourself to get lost as you brisk walk along unfamiliar streets with your collar up, back hunched, hands in your pockets and your earphones tucked under the ear flaps of your beanie is one of the few things I absolutely enjoy doing.

Folk, I find, has always accompanied cold winter road trips and walks perfectly more than any genre of music.  Here are some songs (not all folk) that I relate to a particular experience on the road (or in between countries) in my more recent travels:

Walking (The Dodos) - Walking the streets of a sleepy, rainy Rimini town looking for an open cafe, famished and jet-lagged .

Suite Judy Blue Eyes (CSN) - Foggy morning on a  bus from Rimini to Bologna

Hunter's Map (Fionn Regan) - Train to Florence looking out the window to see snow-capped mountains, my view disturbed every now and then by dark tunnels

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Fleet Foxes) - Waiting for the train to arrive in the c-c-cold Cercedilla Station en route to Segovia

River (Joni Mitchell) - Walking from Dam Square to Princengracht to meet a friend at the Anne Frank Haus

Driving Sideways (Aimee Mann) - Rainy bus ride from Sagada to Baguio

Subterranean Homesick Alien (Radiohead) - On a cramped bus to Vang Vieng

Soul One (Blind Melon) - Ride from Halong City to Hanoi (as I had left most of my stuff--includung my iPod--at the hostel for the junk boat trip, I was belting this out rather than listening to the song)

It's Natural To Be Afraid (Explosions in the Sky) - Lying on my top bunk on a sleeper train to Sapa

Are You a Hypnotist (Flaming Lips) - Cramped van to the train station from Sapa, a poor Vietnamese man was beside me looking pale and in the brink of throwing up.  I handed him a pill hoping it aided him to at least endure the ride until I got out of there

Foux Da Fafa (Flight of the Conchords) - Hung over and slumped down on the floor of the Madrid Airport waiting to board the free-seating Ryan Air flight to Belgium

Gideon (My Morning Jacket) - On a bus to Barcelona beside a Chilean woman watching two British couples excitedly discuss what they can do at the Barrio Gothic.

Ragged Wood (Fleet Foxes) - Coincidentally trying to discreetly take a photo of two guys at the Barcelona airport who had a striking resemblance to Jim James (of My Morning Jacket) and Robin Pecknold (of Fleet Foxes).

Dance Dance Dance (Lykke Li) - Walking home from a night out drinking with old and new friends in Madrid

Music and travel, more specifically road trips, have always been a very good combination.  Ever since the iPod, the experience of this little pleasure in life has been made even better.  The list above does not even skim the surface of all the songs that trigger small moments in my travels as my love for both are equally boundless and forever inter-twined, but it will have to do until I set out for the road again.  

Big World, Small World

For many purists, technology is a little hard to swallow. Although I am very much for the no frills way of living life, I am in love with the internet. It is a powerful tool for connecting people, a source of information, a money-maker, an opportunity finder...things that were unfathomable just less than a few decades ago.  

Yet the internet also makes a big world a lot smaller. Sure this can be viewed as a bad thing. But in more ways than one, it can also be a good thing.  

On a backpacking trip a few years ago in the mountainous region of the Philippines, I crossed paths with a guy from Wisconsin. Reid. Back then he was doing some work in Korea. I remember that whenever his photo was taken, he'd do the universal Korean pose of holding up two peace signs while squinting his eyes. As all backpacker friendships go, we emailed a couple of times, trying to keep in touch, but eventually lost touch.  

Through the massive social networking that is Facebook, we crossed paths again. Since his last email of being back in Wisconsin, I find out from Facebook that he is now in South America, in between jobs as he is about to move further south the continent. For a few moments of my day I take joy in reading up on an old friend who a few years ago was right next to me on a narrow empty highway waiting for a bus to take us to Manila. He is now miles away leading a very different life from me. Yet, he is also a few taps of my forefinger away. Makes you realize how the world is so massive and yet so small at the same time.  

Thinking of Reid makes me think about the others I've crossed paths with in my travels:  

Eric from Switzerland who I shared a sunrise with in Vientienne. 

Wil from Singapore who I bunked with during a chaotic New Year's Eve in Luang Prabang (this guy was bad ass with the map and called "miles" "clicks"). 

Mercedes who I met in Sagada and travelled to Batad with. She was from Madrid working for an NGO in Cebu.

Paddington from the UK who belted out Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town with me while I played guitar on the sidewalk of Kho San Road. 

Hung and Ousman who I met in Sapa. A Vietnamese Russian dancer and a French computer programmer, respectively. 

Stefi and Korina, German girls who were scared of cockroaches we shared drinks with on a junk boat in Halong Bay. 

Pedro who I shared a cigarette with in Florence. Originally from Guatemala, it was his wife's birthday when we met. It also happened to be Valentine's Day.

Richard & Sue from London. We spent 2 days having breakfast together in Amsterdam. Richard was a double deck bus driver. I gave Sue pearl earrings before I left.

Ralf (?) by the Dam Square in Amsterdam. I gave him and his friends the last of my goods as I was leaving the next day, they shared a rolled hash tobacco cigarette with me.

Juan from Barcelona. Introduced to me via Facebook by a friend. He was an artist who lived in a beautiful apartment in Tibidabo. He made me coffee and rolled me cigarettes, I washed his dishes.

Andy at a bar in Madrid. He had a lisp and reminded me a lot of a dorky friend I loved. We talked about his love for South East Asia and music. He liked Rum Lemonade and bought me one before the night died out.

There are so much more names and places I don't remember: a club owner in Vang Vieng who liked Pink Floyd, a Chelsea-loathing Brit who lost his surf shorts and was forced to buy Chelsea shorts for kayaking, an annoying American who thought he was an existentialist but didn't know what that meant when I asked, a Polish dweeb on a train to Segovia trying his best to explain to me how the train's schedule worked...

Where are these people now? What are they doing? Do they think about me once in a while, too?

Big world, small world. To explore it is one good way to live.