by krisis
I woke up from surgery almost exactly eight days ago, and at the time i couldn’t feel any part of my mouth. The state of affairs made it nearly impossible to talk much or open my mouth up too far. Furthermore, as i’ve found in the past, i am an absolutely headcase when i come out of anesthesia – i’m very sensitive to small stimuli.
There i was, Monday morning without a fairly useless body part that i had grown to utterly despise, unable to talk, and wearing a dotted dressing gown. From somewhere down the hall music wafted past, and my softened brain sucked it in like a sponge. “Here Comes The Sun” was recognized immediately, though i couldn’t even begin to approximate the process of humming along. Instead, i immediately turned to my somewhat distraught mother and exclaimed “It’s okay mom, George Harrison is here with me.”
My mother apparently took my accompaniment by a blessed Beatle to mean that i was moving towards the light, and thus became even more upset. Of course, being a mother whose sensitivity to art was washed away by the brutal reign of the television and trickle-through exposure to N’Sync singles, she had already forgotten that my secondary reason for being so upset the last time i was in the hospital for a procedure was that George had just died.
I explained it to her later: Obviously he’s become my guardian angel
Her response? Something about a flying Beatle.
Har har, mom. Har har.
Thank god for modern medicine, that’s all i’m gonna say about that…
Sometimes it’s hard to think of myself as a musician when i’m not making any music. With my jettison of the tonsils impending i’ve been trying not to get too wrapped up in playing music & singing because i know that i’ll be out of commission for at least two weeks after the fact.
I didn’t have any warning when i broke my collarbone, and the following month with music was a horror; i had to sit with my back perfectly aligned to a concrete wall to even have a chance to fret chords, and anything out of first position was met with the indescribable discomfort of the internal versions of nails on a chalkboard. By the time i was healed enough to play again i had lost any sort of direction i had in July, and i had forgotten the chords to “Lost” to boot. It took nearly a month before i started writing and playing again, but what came then spoke for itself: “Will It Ever Come,” “Punk,” “One Way,” and others i can’t recall from the top of my head.
So, i’ve been ignoring my guitar, and it’s been hard. Worse is that i’ve suddenly become surrounded by gigging guitarists, professional vocalists, and one friend who is months away from a major lable deal. It’s become hard to stand in the middle of all of that with my impending loss of voice and to assert that, yes, someone should listen to me. When the blue layout went up i neglected to even add a Trio bar onto it – i haven’t done one since before i began the layout.
Somehow, despite this hiatus, last Thursday two songs happened. They caught me unaware.
Still digesting Star Wars after seeing it tonight; the story was excellent, the graphics were stunning, and the dialog was better than bearable. However, one thing i’d like to mention before the details become hazy to me is that it is entirely obvious that George Lucas had at some point considered scripting the rape of Padme by Anakin (click for spoiler). It was often remarked upon on spoiler boards well before a working print of the movie was ever screened, so i have to assume it never made it out of the scripting phase. In fact, large portions of the script would not have worked out properly had their been a rape. Despite all of this, i definitely regret that the SW franchise is PG by definition, as a PG-13 version of the film would have taken several very interesting turns. Otherwise, Ewan is absolutely stunning, Jar-Jar is exactly as evil and stupid as we had already surmised, and Natalie Portman has some really delectable abs.