On May 30, 3:46 pm, JonLorPro <***@aol.com> wrote:
> On May 23, 12:26 pm, Che <***@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >So, JonLorPro, you're a guitarist, look at the door. Can you tell us
> >why you don't pack a smal suitcase, pick up your guitar and walk
> >out .........?
>
> Maybe because I've done just that. First time was out the door of the
> world of legitimate academe. Many years ago, during a time when I was
> teaching at four different colleges, my wife and I came down to Boston
> (her home town) with a lute that needed some work done on it. A friend
> and early-on voice teacher of my wife's referred us to someone who had
> once been a colleague of hers as guitar instructor at one of the
> conservatories, whom she knew had started making guitars. This turned
> out to be a rather extraordinary individual named Walter Stanul, who
> in brief contact was about as highly influential on me as anyone else
> with whom I spent considerable time (as he happened also to have been
> for Kent Murdick, when they met years before in Florida).
>
> I happened then to have with me one of the first Takamine classicals
> with a pick-up underneath the saddle, and he happened to have one of
> the first mouse amplifiers, the first actually decent sounding easily
> portable battery powered amp. The conjunction of these two elements
> were a magic combination for what then was his newest interest,
> playing in the street, which he'd been doing with one of those boxy
> sounding and never satisfactory contact mikes. Walter is one of these
> guys with a larger-than-life aspect to his character which when
> engaged in active mode creates a kind of vortex around him that has a
> way of transforming time spent in his presence into The Walter Show.
> He spent the afternoon excitedly and volubly espousing to us about
> this new-found lifestyle, risky, potentially but undependably
> lucrative, but mostly just redolent with the ressurrection of
> excitement, adventure, and fun in playing. He then enacted the minor
> repair that was needed on the lute and we left- feeling slightly
> stunned.
>
> It turned out for us to have been a proselytizing experience. We
> considered what was then our situation- untenured peripheral adjunct
> faculty spending hours on the road doing a lotta teaching, a few
> really decent students but mostly of a half-interested non-
> conservatory calibre whom I then had to grade, and few chances a year
> to perform, which even if successful, entailed grinding preparations
> and were emotionally overcharged ordeals. The next time Walter saw us
> was two or three months later- we had quit our positions, moved down
> to Boston, and he encountered us on the playing on the street- people
> who had actually paid attention to one of his manic outbursts of
> enthusiasm. He was amazed and slightly frightened that anything he
> said to anyone might have that much impact on them. We then spent
> several years in which, in addition to what ever we could muster in
> the way of concerts, private events, and private teachning, we were
> regular daily fixtures in downtown Boston. Aside from generating a lot
> of anecdotes, it was on of the best things I could have done for my
> own performance.
>
> But what to do in the northern winter? One year we walked out the
> door to our apartment and moved into a pop-top trailer and headed
> south- got involved for a time with a Renaissance dance troup in the
> D.C. area, and continued on- found out that a lot of Southern cities
> don't seem to have the sorts of central downtown areas we were
> looking for, and got marooned for a few months by an accident in
> Naples, Florida. It was during this time that an organizing official
> decided, in spite of our singing songs in Medieval French accompanied
> by lute, that our use of our small and hidden battery amp was too
> inauthentic for the Sarasota Renaissance Fair- a decree handed down
> from the golf-cart in which he was driving himself around on the
> grounds while stage acts in the background used pianos and played
> bluegrass. So we were booted out, and saw later a bit of our
> performance on a local news story about what the fair had to offer.
> We limped back to Boston eventually, in a car that had an intrepid
> spirit, though it looked like it had been accordioned back to size
> after having been in a crusher or in a Warner Bros. cartoon- the first
> time we drove into the city, parked and got out, the first person that
> came down the sidewalk knew who we were from our street playing. that
> was a welcome home.
>
> But then a year or so later, it was out the door again, apartment left
> behind, and we went to Europe. Bought a van in Amsterdam, and made
> our way to Southern France- Avignon was where the Moroccan gypsy feud
> mentioned a few posts up was being waged, and a crazy Basque guy who
> was encamped next to us decided that since we were from Massachusets,
> of course we must be intimately aqauinted with Jacqueline Kennedy, and
> so unbenownst to us he steamed off and on that basis somewhow wangled
> us into taking part in a celebratory Mass in honor of a visitation of
> a papal representative to the Papal Cathedral there which dates from
> schism. It was one episode in magic time, a continual Fellini film.
>
> So, I know of the walk out the door. Someone with a conventional view
> could look at this history, look at our present situation and say we
> were nuts, and foolhardy from that first foray- and I wouldn't
> necessarily argue with him, even though there's not much I would
> change. But- I look at that door and I like having it. I like this
> space in which I sit. As rewarding as it all has been, there is also a
> somewhat sullen side to my relationship to the world for which I like
> that barrier. One can of course venture into the world and carry that
> door along metaphorically within ones own mind and spirit, but for
> now, I like its tangibilty.
>
> >Btw, did't Luteman say someone took a shot at him playing the
> >sexaphone or banjo the other day?
>
> Were they shooting at him, or at the banjo? There is a few panels in
> a Pogo book I have in which attendees at a soiree seemed to be making
> themselves scarce in response to Pogo's singing of a song while
> accompanyong himself on banjo. Nonplussed he turns to his loyal
> friend Porkypine, who had remained staunchly by his side, and says, "I
> allus thought my loud banjo playing covered up my singning prety
> good?" To which Pokypines terse but concisely cogent reply is,
> "Wull.... yes and no."
I am very surprised. Do you mean to tell me you spent a little time
around Walter Stanul and didn't get an arch-guitar? I bought a
Southwell in 1995. Also, I recall talk of the best 1St string... a
lot of guessing going one here...I just watched. Walter Stanul,
didn't tell you about the pink German "Andrea" 49# test spool of
fishing line he keeps in the freezer?
> But what to do in the northern winter?<
What do the birds do? San Jose C.R. average temp. year round is 72
degrees. You could teach English, Music and Guitar. Life is easy keep
it simple.
Do a little web search on San Jose C.R There is a local English
newspaper. I live there two years.
Interesting story and the road can...it can be brutal. This is where
the word I seldom if ever use comes up. Artist, WTF, we are the
antennae of the race, right.
Use that antennae and the road is just a Journey.
Che'