I'm back from three days of silent retreat in the middle of Devon. There wasn't any sound: not beyond the birdsong, people breathing, oaks rustling, and a man in my dorm with night terrors.
There was music inside my head. Sometimes, it was empty, and compulsive, like the middle of a Robben Ford solo I'm trying to nail. At other times, it was dreamier, more open-hearted: like this Wes Montgomery tune I want to spend more time with. Then there were those sincere, naive songs, songs I sincerely and naively love - Morrissey, Brel, the Pretenders.
There was a book I found in the library. It got me thinking about music and the guitar: and what these two things really mean. Its name is 'Talking Zen', and it was written by Alan Watts, a legend of the 60s counter-culture. Apparently my mystical grandma had his books, back when my Mum was growing up.
Here's the passage that struck me:
When the process of education or acculturation has been completed, we need a cure for it. Education is like salting meat in order to preserve it; when we are actually ready to cook the meat and eat it, we need to soak some of the salt out [...]
When we watch a child who is really just dancing for fun, we say, "That's delightful." The child eventually notices that this is a way of getting attention and becomes self-conscious about dancing. For our part, we send him to dancing school where he becomes stiff and wretched, and only after many, many years of practice does the child, now a young man or woman, recapture the spontaneity of childhood as a dancer.
You get the idea.