New Guitar Strings

I have an old acoustic guitar that has been gathering dust for the past few months in my room because the D string broke. Yesterday a friend came over for dinner and surprised me with a new set of strings. So now I've got a playable guitar and a new skill in re-stringing. It's been a while since I've practiced and many, many moons since I took lessons as a kid. One day I'll make an attempt at reading music again, and learn to play Classical Gas better than Mason Williams, but for now, I'm just going to try to play more often the stuff that I already know. Like Nirvana. Oh, how I miss the early 90's...

Crawl Before You Walk

If I'm to ever accomplish goal #7 - get a painting into a gallery - I'm going to have to start small and start now. With drawing. I'll get to painting once I've got this down. So I've started sketching and learning to draw properly using the 1979 best-seller Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Excellent book. According the author, Betty Edwards, drawing (meaning composing a realistic image with pencil or graphite on paper) can be taught just as reading and writing and arithmetic can be taught. She says there are five basic elements to drawing well:

1. Perception of edges/contours
2. Perception of shadows and light
   
3. Perception of relationships - perspective and proportion
   
4. Perception of space - positive and negative
   
5. Perception of the "thingness" of the thing (huhwhat?)

Drawing the hand is supposedly one of the most difficult things to draw well, so of course Betty asks you to go ahead and do a sketch of your left hand. I think I have no real trouble with the perception of contour, but the shading is not right. Anyway, I'm only on lesson two in the book, which is on the perception of negative space. (Very Zen, all this "draw what is not there" stuff.)

Progress on Board and In the Air

Been practicing the ball tossing while standing next to my bed and listening to Bach. The height of the bed means that when I drop the balls I don't have to keep bending over to pick them up, and the music helps to keep a rhythm. At this point I've got one rotation down - I can get all three balls in the air and catch them, but that's where it stops. So it's a slow process, this learning to juggle.

As for Moby Dick, I've reached chapter 35, which means that Ishmeal and Queequeg have finally boarded The Pequod and met captain Ahab, and I'm about one sixteenth of the way through the book. Have yet to meet the whale.

Learning to juggle

Yesterday I met up with a busker friend of mine who gave me a few tips on how to juggle. It seems there are a lot of ways and things to juggle, but I just want to get the basic three ball routine down. I never expected juggling to be easy, but I went to a barbecue last night after my juggling lesson, and was surprised to find that everyone there (I mean EVERYONE) could juggle like it was nothing. People I've known for years who were all like, "Oh, yeah, I can juggle. Check it out."  And then they proceeded to perform a circus act while carrying on the previous conversation and drinking their beers. Where was I when everyone learned to do this? The irony of it is I actually took a clowning course at university but we did not learn this skill.

I'm thinking either I shouldn't bother to learn since it's obviously so passé, (unless I can quickly progress to juggling fire and live chain saws, which may turn a head or two) or I'd better damn well learn otherwise I'll be the only one in town who can't keep her balls in the air. Or, um, something along those lines. Anyway, it's on my list, and I've already made juggling balls, so I might as well just get on with it.

Here's a simple recipe for juggling balls that don't bounce and have good grip:

1. Wrap a few handfuls of dry rice in cellophane (make the ball of rice smaller or larger depending on your hand size)
2. Cut the spout off a regular (12") balloon and stuff the rice ball into the balloon
3. Cut the spout off another balloon and wrap the first one with it 

Now make a couple more and you've got yourself a nice homemade set to learn with. Or just to throw at the neighbour's cat if juggling really isn't your thing. 

Call me Ishmael

Started reading Moby Dick a few days ago and was surprised to find that Herman Melville had a great sense of humour. I thought he would be all serious and difficult to read. (I also mistakenly thought he was British, so I've clearly got a lot to learn.) Here's an excerpt from page one:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself pausing involuntarily before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball." [31, CRW Publishing]

Ha ha, I like this guy. The narrator introduces himself and tells his reader that a while ago he was bored and depressed, and, as he always does whenever he feels like this, he goes to sea to "sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." That does sound like a great way to rejuvenate the soul. Makes me wish I owned a yacht.