http://www.alansondheim.org/hardsolo.png
https://youtu.be/ig0Puufa7_Y VIDEO (earphones if possible)
This was a hard solo. I was nervous. I wore my 2600 hat shielding
the light. Stephen Dydo gave me a Tibetan shirt he brought back
from Ladakh which matched his own. I was thinking about Xinjiang,
Tibet, China. I wanted to play has fast as possible. I wanted
to see what I could do. I wanted to prove I could play as well now
as I did then. I wanted to honor the guitar I was playing which
has been with me for over half a century. I wanted to honor the
maker of the guitar, Di Giorgio, and the restorer from the early
1980s, Candelario Delgado, one of the great Los Angeles guitar
makers. I wanted to prove my athleticism in my fingers, my hands,
my arms, not muscular but quick. I wanted to play so fast my mind
couldn't wander. I wanted to think through the sound, not around
it. I wanted never to know what was coming next. I wanted the
sound to take control. I wanted nothing else but that sound. I
wanted time to stop. I didn't want to know where or when I was. I
wanted all this all at once. I wanted this perfection. I wanted
nothing else and everything and nothing. I played for hours in
little more than three minutes. I practiced for weeks. I forgot
literally how to slow down. I literally couldn't. I literally
could only go the way it went. I literally could stop only when
it stopped.
Video by Azure Carter, thanks to Stephen Dydo, Robert, Withers.
More from this soon. (Music for the Earth, Stephen Dydo and
Friends, Greenwich House last Saturday night.)
