The Daily Honky Tonk 182nd Edition

The Daily Honky Tonk
182nd Edition
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
4:25 PM

Two weeks turn around on writing another DHT. I like this much better. It could have to do with the fact that I finished all my finals and don’t start spring classes again till Tuesday. I’m also most of the way packed to move and did a lot of cleaning on my apartment. And I don’t even move out until Saturday. So I think I am in pretty good shape.
Mainly in this email I want to share a few quotes that I found recently and to re-share a piece I wrote back in 2006 that I’m pretty proud of.

Quotes

From a Word A Day by Anu Garg- an interesting quote about effecting change. However, I think that in reality everyone needs to be willing to “be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation”.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. -Susan B. Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906)

From my Book of Mormon class, a letter that our Professor once received that talks about what Faith really is.
“I worry when we sometimes teach our children that if they have enough faith, God will restore a lost dollar, a lost toy, or a lost school paper to them. What will they think when God does not restore a lost parent or sibling? Do we set them up to fail in their faith? We teach them the belief that faith is enough to get what they most want. When in fact, faith is being willing to trust what God wants, whatever that might be.
“I have spent a lot of time wondering why my faith was not enough to change things. What I have come to understand is, that sometimes it takes more faith to accept things as they are, than it does to change them. I have also come to understand that true faith is trusting God, even when it hurts desperately, even when we don’t feel equal to what is asked of us, even when we don’t seem to receive what we live for, even when we feel so alone, even when we don’t understand. With the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we do not give up, give out, or give in. We endure, we trust with faith that we will someday understand. We strive to love God as Christ did, and to trust in His perfect love for us.”

I love the line in this letter “even when it hurts desperately”. I don’t even know that I’ve hurt desperately, but sometimes my heart has ached for a long time as I have tried to understand something. But its not necessary to understand everything. Nobody does and nobody asks us to.

Baby

Fallout boy has a song called “Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner,” (I actually don’t even really know what it sounds like, but Amy said it was her favorite one time) but to say “Nobody” is a big assumption and I am going to prove that assumption as false. I, myself put Baby in the corner all the time. In fact, that is where Baby belongs; in the corner. By putting her in the corner I can find her and pick her up again each morning. It’s nice to see Baby in the corner all quiet and pretty. And when I pick her up, she sings. Or, at least it sounds like music to me.
Baby is my acoustic guitar- a Jasmine model by the guitar company Takamine. I found her in a little guitar shop in Urbana, the kind where the guy running the store probably owns and loves it. He was very nice, very helpful in finding a guitar, and was also very knowledgeable about guitars. It didn’t take long before we found the Takamine; it had just come in. Who knew that you could buy such a great friend for one hundred and twenty dollars?
Baby and I can play for hours and often, we do. Until of course, a couple of people in the house get tired of us repeating the same music to make sure we have just the right words and just the right sounds. So Baby and I take a break, knowing we can pick back up right where we left off. It’s rather pleasant to know your friend will be in the same temper it was the last time you left it- even if you are not.
Sometimes I play Baby because I’m sad. Sometimes because I want to get rid of some anger or stress. But most of the time I play Baby because it makes me happy. With no relevance to whether I am sad, angry, or happy- Baby still sings beautiful and clear, even when I cannot.
Some days I just sit with Baby running through the same old stuff. Making sure it stays in my head so I don’t forget it. But then, Baby and I like to explore; try new chord combinations, write new lyrics, and form beginnings of new songs. When Baby and I can’t figure things out, we just walk away to wait a little while.
While waiting I start listening to music. No, not hearing music- listening to it. Breaking it down into components. The voice fluctuates here, but the guitar doesn’t come in till here. Oh! Did you catch what the drum did right there. Genius. Once you take the component apart to see what you do, you can put them back together. I like that. It makes me feel like a little mechanic.
When I was a little kid, I played with Legos all the time. I loved piecing the colored brick together into spaceships of exploration, armies to fight out civil wars, and space wars and wars where Indians, space guys, cowboys, and revolutionaries all fought on the same battleground? I loved building massive cities with buildings two or three bricks high where Lego people became real, ran businesses, and fell in love. This was great, I loved it. But I often wandered and kind of wished in my little heart that I was like the kids who had to tear things up and figure out how they worked; like for example my cousins Russel and Shelvin. But apparently I must have been afraid of the consequences of tearing things up. Because all I ever did was build. And if I couldn’t make it on my own then it wasn’t that important. Sadly, I lack a mechanical understanding of electricity, cars, home repair, etc.; in short, when I grow up, I’ll read the manual. But it wasn’t the same with music.
Music was something I could grasp. We bought a piano for about seventy-five dollars off our close friends the Walkers. Out of tune, with ruined keys, it should have been on the side of the street (which is where it did eventually end up, soaked by rain, sounding awful and sick). But instead my parents bought it with hopes of getting it tuned and repaired (when we finally called to see what the cost would be to repair and tune the piano, they told us it would be better to buy a new one- repair costs would have been prohibitive). After they bought it, that piano sat there in our house- looking pretty?
At the time it was beautiful to me. I kept asking my parents to let me take lessons. Finally, after a year of me pleading for lessons, they found Kevin Wells, a piano teacher from another ward in Roanoke Virginia. So, in fourth grade, I began to unlock the components of the piano, and, in reality, to all music.
I recall flying through the first couple of lesson books, barely able to contain the excitement. Progress, learn more, progress, get better. I was breaking into a beautiful world that was mine to play with. At the time though, I only knew the parts of the music world that others had created. It didn’t matter though, I loved playing others music. Because I could play others music, in a way it became mine.
It wasn’t till shortly before we moved that I started really listening to music. After we moved, music became my constant companion. My new piano teacher, Brother Nakea, studied piano performance at the University of Illinois, and still meets with a professor before performing sets of work by Chopin, Mozart, and Grieg. With this type of apprenticeship and previous learning, my pinao teacher has been able to extend my understanding of music far beyond anything I imagined. He opened my eyes to writing music, to loving the intricacies that the composers put in. Little did I realize when I started piano that one day I would be able to play a group of notes on the piano and tell what scale they came from. Now, I am running through a piece and I’ll stumble through a section. “play that first chord Mark, and name it.” “G# Major 7?” I ask uncertain. “Yes.” “So the G# Major scale is . . .” “Actually, there is no G# Major scale, it’s used for chords, but you write music in A Flat Major.” “Oooooh.” I feel like a little boy again. I get giddy with excitement when I start to see a composer’s patterns. I get even more giddy when I realize how I can apply it to my own music. That little boy desire to tear things apart and build again is realized. I get to ear music apart and piece it back together.
This destructive and constructive phase been coming together for years. Now, things start to fall in line and I can write music. Baby and Piano are extra appendages for building the music. And when I throw my voice on top, even if not the greatest, then I can add an extra layer of music, and of words. Words and music are two of the most powerful influences I know. The feelings they create are quite evident. Music and words can bring the Holy Ghost into a church meeting. They create National pride when large groups of people sing the National anthem together in unison. Music and words are vital to everything we are. They are vital to me.

The Editor,
Mark