Prior to Hurricane Katrina, as most of you probably know, I owned a lot of books. Literally thousands. Between Sunny and I, probably tens of thousands.

One of the books I acquired in the months prior to the great water-log of 2005 was a slim volume by jazz pianist Kenny Werner entitled Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within.

I know I wrote about it, and quoted from it, at the time because it made a definite and deep impression on me, particularly with respect to why we as musicians feel it necessary to play at all, and what drives us to maddening attempts at continual perfection (maddening, for the most part, because these attempts are doomed to failures of varying degree).

I recently reacquired the book, and this time when reading through it, I was struck by a correlation between Kenny's philosophy and that line from Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince:

"...what is essential is invisible to the eye."

There are those that tell you that BB King can convey more with one note than most other guitarists can say in five minutes of scale shredding. I myself have said that playing the blues is about speaking the truth by creating each line of melody as you proceed, rather than simply hinting at it by playing circles around it. I think it comes down to that saying, "Life isn't about finding yourself. It is about creating yourself."

In other words, that one note from BB means more because it is in fact the only note that could be played at that time. It's not a suggestion or potential answer, despite BB's humble apology that it goes "...something like this."

A musician has depth because each note they produce has chiaroscuro, something else I've talked about before:

Nothing holds a shape without its shadow,
that place at the edge where the lines are rough,
and sharp defined shapes blur in a limbo
made of innuendo and the small stuff

that, in shades of gray, fills up silent space,
shifting with the slightest movement of light
to redefine the angle of a face,
moving what was once unseen into sight.

Compared to that substance, that space within the jar that makes the jar useful (to paraphrase a Zen parable), the effort from a predominant number of musicians can seem like a cardboard cut-out, an endless parade of meaningless notes, a cacophony of mind-numbing technical exercises ... a lot of "talkin' loud and sayin' nothin'".

Kris Kristofferson has a song called To Beat the Devil. If you haven't listened to the lyrics lately, they're about a recommendation from the devil on the meaninglessness of trying to change the world with your music, and Kris' response to that challenge. The Devil's argument goes like this:

"If you waste your time a-talkin' to the people who don't listen, "To the things that you are sayin', who do you think's gonna hear. "And if you should die explainin' how the things that they complain about, "Are things they could be changin', who do you think's gonna care?"

There were other lonely singers in a world turned deaf and blind,
Who were crucified for what they tried to show.
And their voices have been scattered by the swirling winds of time.
'Cos the truth remains that no-one wants to know.

Well, to be honest with you, I've felt that way a lot. There are definitely times when it seems like nobody's listening, nobody cares what I'm saying, and it wouldn't really matter much if they did.

But I tell you what: that's defeatist thinking. I used to say that in order to change the way people think, you first have to make sure they're thinking. That's a bit of a downer, too. It's a cynic's approach to life. That everything sucks. That there is inevitably a need for either bitter coating on the sugar pills, or sugar coating on the bitter pills. The cynic lives their life believing that human beings, and this must needs include themselves, are intrinsically no damned good. And what, pray tell, is the point of that? Better, I think, to retain at least a little optimism, or at least perseverance and stubborness of purpose, if you can't muster a bit of a smile, so that like Kristofferson, you can say:

And you still can hear me singin' to the people who don't listen,
To the things that I am sayin', prayin' someone's gonna hear.
And I guess I'll die explaining how the things that they complain about,
Are things they could be changin', hopin' someone's gonna care.

I was born a lonely singer, and I'm bound to die the same,
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul.
And if I never have a nickle, I won't ever die ashamed.
'Cos I don't believe that no-one wants to know.

If we're not supposed to affect the world at all, if we really are just a moment's ripple in the ocean, then what's the frickin' point?

One of the blogs I read pretty regularly is Dave Pollard's How to Save the World. Occasionally, something he writes strikes a particularly resonant chord with me --- like his February 4th gem A Miniature Truth: Becoming Authentically Yourself.

I'll admit, some of these things I've thought and compiled myself over the years. But to see these 9 ideas strung together, in fact, dependent on each other in such a way that in order to accept one as truth, you really have to accept them all, for better or worse, in order to truly understand the implications of each, is a step I'd never taken until reading Dave's post. In summary, these truths are:

1. We do what we must, then we do what's easy, then we do what's fun.

2. Things are the way they are for a reason; if you have any hope to change something, first understand what the reason is.

3. Life's meaning, and an understanding of what needs to be done, emerges, most often, from conversation in community with people you love.

4. Community is born of necessity.

5. To get people to change, first Let Yourself Change, to become a model that shows people personally, one-to-one, a better way to live.

6. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

7. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

8. To be nobody-but-yourself --- in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else --- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

9. Our civilization is in its final century.

For more detail, please refer to Dave's blog :)

OK, so as of January 4, I've quit smoking. Roughly a 25-year, 2 pack a day habit and now it's done. No patch. No gum. No Wellbutrin XL (which my better half who also quit needed to help her over the first week). I did have a doozy of a cold, though, which qualifies somewhat as cheating --- since I tend to not smoke whenever I have a fever-cough-chest congestion condition and I get them for a week once or twice a year. This one happened to coincide with the smoking cessation date. So sue me.

I'm hoping that the non-smoking, in combination with voice strengthening exercises from Jaime Vendera, will help me recover what has for the last 8 or 9 years been a slowly increasing loss of range (about an octave and a half lost in that time).

I wonder, however, whether it in fact is the smoking that has been the primary factor, or the lack of use. I also wonder about polyps. My cousin had them and had to have them removed, and I've known several other singers who have suffered the same situation.

---
1 month 5 hours 32 minutes smoke-free
1,254 cigarettes not smoked
$238.26 saved
4 days 8 hours 30 minutes life saved