October 26, 2019 – Okay, I’m back. It has been a nice little time off; I took from Saturday through Wednesday, straight, without work, except for the Los Angeles County property tax auction (no, I didn’t get anything) and my swearing in as a notary. Funny thing, there’s almost as much pomp and circumstance becoming a notary as becoming a lawyer. Who knew? The problem is I’ve had all that time off from practicing guitar too. It was just one thing after another: the car, the attempt to fix my hot tub that didn’t work out because we bought the wrong connector; two trips to the junk yard, and there were two trips to our desert land too, the first one to buy a shipping container, the second to have the shipping container delivered.

That land is north of Los Angeles. It’s not very pretty in pictures because cameras can’t capture the size of the mountains. The mountains are much larger and closer than they appear in photos. I guess that’s the same thing as that sign on my truck side-mirror that says objects are closer than they appear; mountains are closer than they appear. It’s hard to describe without pictures, but there’s an area before  my actual place where the terrain is foothills, with more vegetation too. The foothills are pretty, and much more expensive, but I like the view of the mountains from my very flat land. Every time I go I think, when driving through the foothills, how much better it would be to be there, more of a “high-rent’ neighborhood kind of thing, then I get to my actual place and I’m always surprised by its beautiful simplicity. It’s placed just exactly perfectly between Saddleback Butte and what I call the Snow Mountain, which is a lesser ski resort mountain to the south that’s not named the Snow Mountain. I think its name is Mountain High, or something; I’m not even sure. Maybe it isn’t any ski place; maybe it is Snow Mountain. Anyway, it’s really dramatic there, in a very simple way. And I can afford it. So I find myself telling myself how the simplicity is good. Indeed that’s a theme these days for me.

I have this absolute love affair with Led Zeppelin riffs. Perhaps it was because they were what I heard first, outside of Johnny Cash. I love Whole Lotta Love; I would say it’s my favorite riff of all time. In my last lesson, which was a remarkable two weeks ago, how can that be…I asked to learn Whole Lotta Love and The Immigrant Song. I have my assignments too, but it’s good to get to play something, and play something kind of tough. No, I can’t do these justice yet, and as I said above, the car/hot tub/container in the desert tasks took all my time for a week, but the week that I did practice (before my brother was here) I was struck by something I absolutely didn’t expect: the riffs in these two amazing songs are remarkably simple. They have just a few notes. Like I said, I can’t really get to the speed needed to make them sound right, but I can do them, and by do, I would say my version of Whole Lotta Love is like you took the 45 of the song (I guess there was one) and played it on 33, if you remember what that was like. I video parts of my lessons so I can follow along later; one little clip has my voice saying how simple they are; I used the word remarkable. It’s funny to hear my reactions; we so rarely document our own reactions. I didn’t keep the video going to capture my teacher’s response to my observation, but it really does sum of the entire concept of simplicity done well. In response to me saying how remarkably simple they are, the teacher said, yes, simple, but the hard part is coming up with them.

My container has me going too. If you look at the picture, you’ll see we had it set next to the one and only bush on the land. I found a stick too, placed it as landscaping. I want to build many things, but it does start from somewhere, apparently from one bush and one stick and one container. That’s about as simple as it gets.

I have varying thoughts of wanting to make a pasture and round pen for horses, of making a small house, of getting power by putting solar panels on the roof of the container, of landscaping with desert plants, all with simplicity as a theme, but a hard to get it done kind of simple. I’ve watched video after video of things that interest me on these subjects. I am concerned for the state of the desert though. I took a drive in my Rover down a dirt trail, and there was trash everywhere, trash of the nature of couches, building materials and general yuck, and you can’t see it until you drive into the desert about the length of a city block. I’m not sure what that means. The desert might not be fully safe, or perhaps the neighbors are just pigs. I am not sure yet. But I do know right now I need to stop watching videos about how to build various things and actually go practice these songs I never knew were actually playable because…

I’m hoping for the best on my desert place. I’m hoping it becomes a place I can have a base to build from. And I’m hoping it’s safe, because…

Because it will be really amazing to play Whole Lotta Love at full four-speaker 50 Watt volume without anyone hearing it.

Ah, the simple things. You can’t beat them! It really does make me wonder exactly how people come up with them. It really is genius.