Anthologies of Awesome

Because I refuse to let even one half semester of my GI Bill big government money check go to waste, I am in a sculpture class. Besides growing some new appreciation of the incredible musculature of the walrus, it has been a little bit of an eye opening adventure. I had no idea it was that much damn work to put together a fucking walrus. Not just physical work, though my forearms have never felt this level of pain, but mental work. You have to realize a creature you have never really been close to and then for it into something abstract, and then bring it somewhere closer to reality where things have “conceptual value.”

It’s like writing a letter to God. No, it’s harder. I actually know walrus(es) exist.

An abstraction, though, does offer a decent look into the way your brain works. I am somewhat convinced most people have no idea how the consciousness machine cranking out experiential day to day even works. I say somewhat, because I have no idea exactly how it works, but I have a decent set of ideas.

And so, to drive home a point I don’t need to make, telling a bunch of people to make an abstract version of something out of clay is really damn weird. One girl in the glass asked me what that even meant. In reply I held up a ball of gooey plasticine clay with tusks and said, “Like this, only not really a walrus, but capturing what a walrus is.”

Just call me Jesus.

I have all these damn walruses (it is walruses not “walri”) all over my coffee table, probably driving my girlfriend toward some sort of stroke. They have different levels of walrusness vs. blobs of clayness, but they’re all a goddamn walrus. A walrus is hard to fucking make abstract, but sort of easy to make conceptual.

Now:

I once constructed a gargoyle out of the Missouri mud I dug out of my army boots when we had a lull in training. It was actually pretty good, and I wish I had not given it away, but a kid there really wanted it. It nailed a sort of oafish, semi-demonic, sad monster which does not exist. It was damn good.

Now:

That was abstract. It had all kinds of gargoyleness, but was not a gargoyle. Because there are no gargoyles (as far as living things). It could not be conceptual, because what the fuck is a gargoyle? I could have given it six legs and eight penises. It would be just as accurate a representation as the original. An accurate representation of what is not is actually easy.

Now:

Again, I understand how religion works. It is the abstraction of what has never really been, i.e. an order that we can understand in the universe or whatever. You can abstract the shit out of a spirit realm with dieties and shit, but you can’t bring it into the realm of the conceptual. Not to say people don’t try. I have seen some interesting attempts to drag the unreal through that portal into our state. But it’s always an abstraction. Even people who believe mightily in their God can’t really explain a god concept. Or, for that matter, realize a god for you.

Clay is an interesting medium.

I have mentioned previously being in a band.

I went through a serious bout of musically related depression not long back when all of my gear was stolen, with the exception of one lone Maxon OD pedal that had been dropped in the snow by the thieves. That pedal now picks up AM radio stations.

The gear lost, while cheap, did have some serious sentimental value. I got the Global you see in the video from my Grandpa when he died and that strat has more deployments under its belt than most first enlistment Army guys I know. The amp is a pawnshop Peavey 5150, which is a horrible choice for most types of music not related to Spandex, but it added a real gravel and blood note to our sound. I guess it doesn’t really matter, since everything is impermanent, but I miss that stuff. I also miss the thousands of dollars I spent trying to get that sound back.

That strat is, without a doubt, the best guitar I have ever owned. In my hands, it beats out any of the Gibsons or Gretsches easily and trounces any Fender, even the Americans, I have played. And it’s just a cheapo Mexican strat I bought with lawn mowing money when I was a kid and started modding. But it had some sort of strange power. Maybe just because I knew where everything on it was. Harmonics don’t translate exactly from guitar to guitar, even exact replicas from the same production run. So, it had somewhere around 12 years of experience or so that went with it.

Now I have two guitars trying to fill that sonic void. I guess I shouldn’t complain, but I miss all the gear, especially that strat, greatly. It still makes me well up and seethe thinking about some asshole kid not understanding my Grandpa’s Global or that guitar I babied for years and years. Buddha never faced the challenge of forgetting a good guitar.

Anyway, this is from one of our first shows last summer. We picked up a drummer the night before and the singer is singing this song literally for the first time. Most importantly, it shows off that amazing sound from that collection of (honestly) crap.