And Another Thing

I know i've already blogged today but I feel I have more to say.
Any of you that know me will know that I used to think of myself as a bit of a musician. I haven't played a guitar for quite some time now and feel that i've lost my mojo. I can't get back into the flow of it. I know that it will come back to me with much perseverance. I need to rough up my fingers again because at the moment they are painful after a few minutes of playing. I've also very recently bought a new guitar and finding it hard to bond with it. Maybe because it's an acoustic Fender and i'm more used to harsher sounding electrics. I've wanted to switch to acoustic for ages but now that I have i'm not sure I can play it as well as I can an electric. Also, my flat has high ceilings and extremely good acoustics so when I play, it's loud and I can hear all my mistakes which infuriates me. I'm quite a perfectionist and if I do something wrong, I come down hard on myself.This isn't just when I play the guitar. I'm like this in life with most things and tend to give myself a hard time whenever I think i've made a mistake.
I need to try to relax and unravel the stiffness that I have. The best way for me to do that is to do the things I love which is firstly going to be to get a strong relationship going with my guitar so I can play properly. I think I want to learn another instrument too. I'll wait til i'm back on track with the guitar and then i'll think about what other instrument I want to learn. It's most likely to be the piano. I sometimes hear a piece played on a piano and get the most intense shiver run through me. Music is my biggest passion. I couldn't imagine my life without it. It has the ability to hold memories within a single song. There are some songs I find very difficult to listen to because they hold emotions for me that are far too intense to handle. They bring back memories of times I either want to forget or that have unresolved issues that i'm not ready or strong enough to face right now. But there are other songs that hold brilliant memories of times in my life that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Most of my memories are somehow linked to a certain song. Some songs remind me of people in my life, some of places i've been, some of certain events. Music for me makes the world go around. I think it's the only thing in my life I couldn't live without. In the words of Frank Turner "If music was the food of love, i'd be a fat romantic slob".
Or maybe it's one of two things I can't live without. I'm not sure how long  I could last without books. Other than the past week, cos I was away, I make time to read every single day. I've always liked to read but over the last year and a half I have read far more books than I the rest of my life put together. It's probably because my girlfriend is a writer and reads a lot more than anyone else i've ever met so I don't feel guilty if I bury myself in a book for a few hours because she knows exactly how it feels to get lost in a fictional world. I tend to immerse myself into a book as much as she does with her own writing. I stay out of her writing because I think it's a personal thing while it's in the delicate stages of a first draft but she did share some of it with me tonight and i'm looking forward to seeing where it will go. I think if she can throw herself into it this time she'll be more successful than she would expect. Without being biased I truly believe she has what it takes. All she needs to do is start believing it too.
I'm thinking of tackling some classics as the only ones i've read are gothic horrors like Dracula, Frankenstein and a few Jane Austin type novels at school which don't really count. I reckon i'll go for Moby Dick. It won't be yet though because I have a load to get through. I'm on Wolves Of The Callah, book 5 of the Dark Tower series at the moment and there are two more of them to get through. I have The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as well that I haven't got round to reading yet. Between us we have at least 500 hundred books and there are quite a lot that I haven't read yet. I've also been recommended another series which I will eventually get round to reading. Stephen King is probably my favourite author and I think anybody that has read one of his best pieces of work such as The Stand or The Dark Tower and entered the worlds of Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg or Roland Deschain and Eddie Dean, will know that he has the most incredible mind. I have read a lot of his work but there is plenty more and I plan to read every single one of them.
There is also a series of books aimed at children but enjoyed by many adults called Percy Jackson and I know some of you will have heard of the film but I saw that after waiting a long time for it and it was such a let down. The books are incredible and I have read them all more than once. There is now a new series by the same author, Rick Riordan, that is set in the same place and with some of the same characters. I will certainly be reading it as soon as I get my hands on a copy.
I'm watching Life Stories: Russell Watson. What an amazing man. As if one brain tumour the size of two golf balls wasn't enough for one man to survive, he gets a regrowth and has to have a second removed. It's just not right is it? A gifted tenor at not even 40 years old with two little girls to leave behind. Against the odds he fought back and is now well and living an almost normal life. I don't know if I would have the strength to fight so hard against so much tragedy. I'd like to think i'd give it my all but I think it would be hard not to give up. I don't know very much about this man but I do know that he will be a massive inspiration to people in the same or similar circumstances to what he endured and will give hope to those who reach the point where they get tempted to quit fighting. A brave man in my eyes.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy