I Would Like To Exert Hegemony All Over Your Body

I am developing a new relationship with my guitar. The exact character of this new relationship is still a little obscure, as the notion really just popped into my head randomly during rehearsal last night. Perhaps it was simply a by-product of loopiness brought on by the typical weekend lack of sleep, water and food, or even the radio chatter I perceived coming through Colombo's bass amp (I think it was there, or else I was a bit more out of sorts than I thought).

In any case, I found myself looking at my guitar in a different way. It felt different in my hands and draped over my shoulder. There seemed to be a different perspective glancing down at the strings and neck. The strings themselves seemed to vibrate with more authority and clarity, standing up to plectrum punishment and never hinting at snapping. This has a lot to do, I think, with my recently acquired and insanely powerful amplifier, which finally allows all the guitar parts to ring out with elan, thus giving me a more solid confidence in my instrument, a new sense of identity.

I got to thinking about technology and its mediating effects on creativity. I don't really believe in pure creativity - technology and creativity are inseparably fused. The piece of wood and metal and electronics that I bash on at practice and on stage is fundamentally just an object, but for an object I sure invest a lot of psychic energy in it. It has its quirks and limitations - a certain inherent bassiness that I'm not all that fond of but am learning to work around, a loose cable jack that's always causing problems at the very worst times - but it's also the surest device I know to transmit what I feel into the physical world (albeit the invisible physical world of signals and sound waves). I don't have nearly the same relationship with this keyboard I'm typing on, for example, even though, regrettably, I spend much more time hammering away at it. And I don't even take particularly good care of my guitar, well at least not in the heat of playing anyway. Maybe the abuse I levy upon it when we play is some sub-conscious reaction to it's object-ness. In order to get the best sounds it's necessary to break it a little bit.

Actually, I don't really know what I'm talking about. It's Monday. I just want to get to rehearsal tonight.