You Are What You Play 12-21-2005
Ricky and Boobsie meet at my place quite often these days. My place has turned into a clubhouse of sorts. Often people sleep over, burning the midnight oil into the early morning hours, talking about their girlfriends or their ex’s. I get to practice wifely duties such as tucking each of my boys into beds, sofas, sleeping bags, and couches and preparing their belongings to be carried off the next day. In the morning, I make coffee, juice, some light breakfast before sending one by one out the door and off to work with a singsong farewell and a mental pat on the rear.
Ricky was talking about getting another Jem guitar. I didn’t understand the decision: Quantitatively and qualitatively, you can’t make more music with more identical musical instruments. I’ve had my junky but lovable pink guitar for almost twenty years. It has taken me through five bands, countless studios, a record contract, stages, CBGB’s, Mercury Lounge, dives along Ludlow Street, the Spiral, Brownie’s, Pyramid, etc. It started out playing mishmash hardcore punk with jazz, metal, thrash, speed ska, then pop, rock, funk. Nowadays, it just whines sitar samples and cool trumpet riffs. I rescued it from one of those music shops on 48th street when it used to be bursting with activity. The store owners literally thanked me for taking this unsaleable item (it started out bright milky pink) off their hands. It cost me a minute fraction of what Jems went for in those days. I said to him: “You know, Delta bluesmen could go through an entire lifetime playing one beat up guitar, making beautiful music, and bringing sunshine and joy into countless people’s lives.” When the Taliban banned music, musicians in Kabul buried their instruments and took to making music with plastic gallon jugs as resonators, attached to wood and wire for makeshift neck and strings. Bird could make bebop with an old Buescher held together with rubber bands. Jaco did the first part of many of his shows with a thrift store copy of a jazz bass. That way, when he did his “Hendrix lighter and fluid” routine, his actual bass was spared the flame. What always interested me about that story was the fact that he could do half a show with something he just picked up earlier that day, and still sound like Jaco.
Musicians of the Northern Alliance jam out in the tents outside Kabul. (Note Mazola Corn Goodness Cooking Oil Jug.)
So I started thinking about Isobel Campbell’s song Poor Butterfly which always struck as one of those things that’s so completed, that one shouldn’t mess with it in anyway. No alterations, no remixing, no remakes. You can’t make something more of what it already is. You just let it be.
And I think I have that attitude towards people in general. I don’t try to change them or improve them. I just let them be. Physically, I feel that way about myself too. I consider it a great blessing that I’m happy with all my original equipment manufacture parts. Oh sure, most of it isn’t perfect by any means, but I’m happy with what I’ve got. I can’t imagine I could become more myself if I hacked off this limb, folded that one back, and stapled the other two open. Maybe it’s because to begin with, I love the human body and each of its parts, curves, angles, incongruencies, and imperfections. The penis is a lovely thing. And to this day, I can’t look at a vagina without thinking about some of O’Keefe’s sumptuous paintings and Bach’s Goldberg Variation 20, with it gorgeous unfolding petals of notes.
Each of our bodies is akin to a musical instrument. It takes years to learn how to make it sing.
Bravo
Well you know I wish more people felt that equanimity about whom they are. Including the physiological configuration.
Of course I’ve been lucky enough to be born a tall, white, reasonably bright male in a country where such easily feel comfort.
It deprives me of empathy for the changes others feel the need for. And makes it impossible for me to judge.
I guess there is likely to be a skewed picture of the success rates about people who chose operations. After all, the ones who live happily ever after are not going to out themselves by returning to the “scene of the crime” and reporting how things are going. It’s only the ones who continue to be unhappy (and heaven forbid: find out that an operation wasn’t all they thought it would be) that will make noise about it. Reading Naomi Wolf’s Beauty Myth and Joan Brumberg’s books, it’s slowly dawning on me that there’s a combination of the American Dream (work hard enough, you’ll get what you want) and consumerism (if I bought this operation and these hormones, things may get better). I’m not one to say. I hope it all works out. I’m just standing on the sidelines taking notes. Trying to make heads or tails of it. I know there are a lot of younger people being bullied into the TS lifestyle. I wish there were more people online ringing a bell saying, “there’s more than one path.”
There are some very unhappy post-op transsexuals and they’ve made the news.
Alex hasn’t really made up her mind. She does feel that just hormones will possibly be all she needs.
As I think you know I agree that there are many paths. Pity so many people are influenced by media and online acquaintances that they can’t see them.
I wasn’t thinking of Alex specifically. But yeah, if you gotta try something that has some questionable consequences in it, it’s definitely best to take it slow and try reversible steps first. One thing I sense missing from the community is a strong representation of feminist topics. Not necessarily as an accessory to validate and align one’s feminity, but more an education and preparation on the practical limitations that one’s new identity will be facing. ie. the glass ceiling, discrimination, objectification, pay scales, etc. I can’t count how many times I have seen tg community postings that had the “all the things I took for granted as a male” topic from post-op people.
I play a Martin D-28 that I bought new in 1973. I’ve had it my whole adult life and then some. The only way it has changed over the decades is to just get more beautiful and more valuable, with its rich glowing patina and incredible sound. If I am what I play, I wonder what it thinks when it sees me in a skirt. I don’t think it cares. I hope it thinks I’m more beautiful and valuable.
We finally meet on my blog: Do acoustic guitars age? Now that you mention it, I have a no name gut strung, and I did notice it sounding better and better each year. Unfortunately, our keyboard player took off with it. Whenever us former bandmates see him cross a street in NYC, instead of calling out and saying hi, we gun the gas pedal on the car.
If your acoustic guitar saw you in a skirt, it would probably say “Well thank heavens, NOW those Japanese manufacturers are really going to be sweating it out when they try to make their next copycat dreadnaught!”
Ok ok….they have assistance from futarnari. *sigh*
Yes indeed, guitars do age. And are better for it if they are cared for decently and played regularly. That’s why a pre-war (WW II) Martin is worth five figures these days — the sound is phenomenal.
I believe acoustic guitars also die eventually, although they can live much longer than their human owners. Mine will pass on to progeny, but I know it will die some day. That’s hard, but it’s okay because I believe my guitar has a brain, and it has a pure heart, so I know its soul will go to heaven. I’m not sure it can say the same about me …
Wow. I have an amp made by the fella who made amps for EV Halen and Holdsworth. It’s a one off. And everytime all my friends see the amp, they are like “turn it on, or you’re gonna ruin it!!!!!!”
It’s still my favorite amp to date ( I have a vibrolux next to it)….I told the maker that I wanted a Roland JC-120 because the reverb rocked, to which he said, “would you buy a car because the cigarette lighter was wondeful?”
Classic.