August 5, 2002
smelling wood and smoothies
Listening to: Rufus Wainwright - In My
Arms
Reading: Carter Beats The Devil by
Glen David Gold
Azza and I originally planned to make a chocolate ice blended but it turned out to be a super-slick smoothie. Cool. We tossed in three packets of Swiss Miss (Rich Chocolate mix) two crushed Oreo cookies, a lot of milk, ice cubes, and a handful of marshmallows into a blender for an entire minute. Yeah! All I seem to be able to talk about this week is food, lol.
I devised dance moves for In My Arms by accident, and I've been practicing and repracticing it since. It involves a lot of expression, waving my arm close to my face during the words "Elephant Man", and some kinky hip movements during "chain you up without shame". Rofl. It's a beautiful song really. And I can't dance for shite but it feels great just letting the passion of it flow from the tip of a finger on my left to one on my right.
A few days ago when Azza slept over at her friend's place
Saturday night and my mum was in Thailand shopping wtih her friends, I took her guitar to
my room and sat on the bed, tentatively placed it on my lap.
The guitar settled into my lap, and it was like something went -click-. I just sat there
with my hands in (what I hope were) the right places and realised that this felt so right.
That if I knew chords I'd be strumming like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I've been playing with the idea of playing guitar for months now. Today I finally am
another step closer. I persuaded Dad to take me to The Guitar Store just to check out the
prices.
The shop was great. It wasn't too brightly lit, and the moment I walked in and the heady smell of wood almost topped my smellgasm charts (note that books are still #1 though). There was a mixed atmosphere of musical intruments playing, conversations in the shop and that wooden smell that I could see myself getting used to.
The guy who greeted us was friendly, and had a slight
speech disorder but managed to deal with it terrifically. I didn't even hint that I was
interested in buying a guitar ("just looking around") but he just
enthusiastically spent half an hour with us going through the various guitars and
recommendations of what to do and what not to do. He attempted some funny sort of
counselling where he and Dad sat in the bench opposite me and stared at me hard, grilling
me with questions.
It was very Oprah Winfrey. Dad 'opened up' and expressed that he was reluctant to let me
play the guitar because he wanted me to 'finish' playing the piano. That means Grade 8 and
diploma I'm guessing. "But Daaad," I (actually!) whined, "I've played it
for almost 8 years already. I want to try something new."
Undeniably Dad was fascinated with the guitars that they had. Some of them were beautiful. The guy (Kuah I believe his name was) demonstrated the differences between nylon strings and steel, Spanish and other guitars, price differences, little details in each guitar. It was absolutely fascinating. I could tell Dad was getting absorbed in it too. He was eyeing the Spanish one with a beautiful brown design at the back of it.
We thanked Kuah, got his number and left.
While walking down the stairs he looked at me and said "We should get the Spanish
guitar."
I looked at him. It was one of the most expensive guitars in the store.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I'll pay a quarter of the price, ask Mummy to pay the rest, and you'll pay 250
for the guitar case."
... ambitious, aren't we.