Smokestack Lightning

There’s something lonely about the quartering in light of day in a dark room.  I barely notice being alone until the sun, rolling around heaven all day, cuts through the pulled down blinds and the arch of glass above my door.  White shafts of light, like elevators laying on end, cut through the dark and let me know that outside the walls, held aloft in light, is a world I don’t want to be part of.

So, I sit here with the jag across my thigh and the tubes warm and glowing, but I don’t play anything.  It just feels good to have it.  It’s my own room.  It’s my own twelve bar progression.  Not some jumpy root-fourth-fifth nonsense.  It’s a slow languid creep into those minor chords and hammered on sixths.  It’s the curl of dust and smoke around my head and nothing on in the whole house but the guitar. 

And then you find your notes.  A few stings, a few runs.  This guitar picks out the dynamics of your string attack like a sommelier, mulling your intentions over its alnico palette.  Curl your fingers into a paw and walk up to play a flatted nine chord.  Whichever one. 

I never know what to do with myself.  I should be going out, but I got a lot on my mind.  A thousand different things.  It’s like when Etta James said she would rather be blind.  For her it was a blackness she sought, an encompassing and merciful holy dark, and lord knows I been there.  I want this ebony fretboard, full of pointless extrapolated notes made from a million different harmonics.  And as those sine functions compound into infinite complexity, it’s all I can think about.  It’s all I can feel.

I would rather be distracted than think, like Ms. James would rather be blind than see. 

That woman can burn me down with that song. 

I jewelled the frets on this guitar. It come to my house a little rough.  Now you can’t feel the frets sliding by under your thumb as you run your hands along the blackwood neck.  The girl’s all smoke. 

Some guitars are twang and some are testosterone made manifest.  Some are a Hemi rolling a Roots super charger.  It’s a character.  Like the harmonics in Howlin’ Wolf’s voice.  You can’t separate it from the instrument. 

She rolls through the tones like scotch over ice.  It’s never a rough transition from one selector switch or pot roll off to another.  Some people want a bunch of tones from a guitar.  This one has the same tone a hundred different ways.  Some guitars just bleed it out.  The 12ax7 in my amp is redhot glowing like the cherry of my cigarette and the sun may be on its way down. The dark room is darker and the shafts of adamant white are just columns of gray.  Fuck the sun. 

I haven’t drank a drop since Monday.  I haven’t spoken to a soul about anything in my head for longer than that.  Nobody would understand, even if they really tried.  It’s not sadness driving me away.  It’s not heartbreak or loneliness.  It isn’t even being a little bit sad.  I just want to be alone with whatever boils out of me through my fingers and on to the nickel strings. 

And when I’m done with this time, I plan on going back.  Going back to spilling whatever boils out of me through my fingers on to some very human skin.  Not a twelve bar, just a straight juke.  Stop your train. Smokestack Lightning. Howl, baby.

I sent a clip of me playing guitar to someone once on a day like today.  I told her all the technical reasons it was what it was.  She listened and said: It just sounds like you’re horny.

Indeed.