Maybe not straight-jacket model material just yet, but my judgement and reasoning patterns are getting downright questionable.
It's been 7 years today I first stumbled into this place with a messed-up Alembic, needing some help. I got some help all right... and in the years since, several more followed with it, plus I made a few friends, some near, some far, some I haven't even met face-to-face.
This morning, I was in an exam room of a Pain Management clinic, waiting for a sedative to kick in, so somebody could take me to the next room and put another shot of steroid into my upper spine, in hopes that I'd get the feeling back in my fingers again... maybe for a couple months. Months. End of the Summer would be awesome. Yeah... I could play out the schedule with my boys before the next set of Titanium upgrades gets installed. Maybe it'll roll into next year - who knows. There's optimism, and there's reality, and then comes scheduling, and they start cancelling each other out.
When I'm in that particular room, I try to go to a good place in my head... me, I think of a pretty girl in a pink floppy hat, with special brownies that look like chocolate bunnies. (hey, this is just my trip...) Anything to keep from thinking about why I'm really in there.
What's all that got to do with anything here? Well, here's where it gets tied-in. Seven years ago I had made up my mind somehow I was going to have Alembic build me a bass. They had just helped me fix the sick Dragon I had got from an ebay crook, as if I had gotten it new. (they did, and it's amazing) I'm going to do it again, only this time, it's going to be a guitar. Strikes me as nutty, because I can't even play a guitar right this minute. Haven't been able to for a couple weeks now, and bass was becoming a struggle. They put this ESI (epidural steroid injection) in me at 11:45 this morning. The nerves in my arm are still warm, my hand feels like a hundred bees stung it, and over the next couple days it will feel puffy as the feeling slowly comes back while that impinged nerve contracts and those electrical currents start flowing freely between my brain and fingertips again. See what I did there? That was on purpose. See... my spine is collapsing up around C7-T1-T2 shorting out the wires that go to the fingers that play the strings, that those glorious Alembic pickups are listening to, and the electronics are amplifying. When you think about it this way, the whole experience really is a big interface... from our brain to the speakers, and sound back to our ears completes the circuit. And it's all dorked-up by rotten bones. But they're going to fix me. Don't ask me how, I just know it.
I told you all at the top Ed went to Crazytown. I swear they were just chocolate brownies. I think the secret is in the butter. But once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
So I won't bore you all with the details, because some of them are still a moving target of formulating ideas as I gain experience and knowledge. I'll just say picture this;
A Brown Bass, reimagined into a guitar, with a few modern twists and vintage throwbacks. I'm particular about a few things, like scale length and neck profile for instance. I know what it looks like, plays like, generally what it sounds like, and I have every confidence Mica and Susan will know what to do, because this is what they have done for life. Like my Custom fretless 5-string Chain-Links, it'll be a one-of-a-kind. They'll even share a couple features. There will be at least one personal touch that identifies it with me, but won't destroy the appeal of the instrument for whoever has it next. You don't always have to understand art to appreciate it.
So here I am, still hangin' out with real players. Even got myself a gig with some boys who like to play Grateful Dead music, Appalachian style. I'd still whip a grizzly bear for a Fleetwood Mac Tribute gig. All things considered, shoot... Lucky as a 7.
Thank You, All. ~Ed of H
