the one that rode the yellow horse...

inscribed on the back:
gus rowden
dixon, mo
he was the one that
rode the yellow horse and
dressed in yellow cambric
like a gold bug in the
free silver parade in dixon
for mckinley and bryan
presidency.

the parting of crickets and bees...

it was strange how it began, he sitting always in the park, one hand resting on top of the instrument, the other resting on the keys, and he unable to really make it sing. he never really understood the bellows, or the pulling necessary to make it sound, so he sat there daily, moving his fingers up and down the white keys, making only clicking sounds to the world, but music always sounding inside of him. he sat there, like a statue, living half a life, clicking away, and every time anyone passed by the park, he was there, and the clicking, well it sounded a bit like crickets. then, as it happened she wandered nearby holding a guitar, not that she could play it, she was taking it somewhere, i know not where, but somewhere. as she carried it, the wind played a bit on the strings like an aeolian harp, and as she passed him and his clicking, he could hear the strings vibrations, at least a tiny bit. he was blind, and the strings buzzings sounded a bit like bees. he knew not what was around him, but he spoke gently, as if into the air. 'i hear bees, with their transparent wings, and i know what that means'. she stopped to look at him and she listened for a bit to his fingers moving up and down the keys. the clicking sound, well, it moved her in some way, so she stood just behind him and shifted the guitar to catch more wind on the strings. the strings vibrated a bit louder, and the man began to be a bit agitated. the bees were coming closer, and he felt a quiet yearning for the sweetness of their honey. at this point she began to strum the guitar, every once in awhile, between blowings on the strings by the wind. the old guitar was quite out of tune, but he could feel within himself something was right. he whispered something to her, that i did not hear, but the most remarkable thing happened next. for some reason, he grabbed the left side of his accordion and pulled it out as long as it would go, creating an extended rectangle of the bellows almost twice the size of the instrument. as he pressed the sides back together, a wheeze and a whine escaped, and over the landscape a small wind blew from the cracks and holes. and you can even see in this photo, that the trees behind them began to dance from the breeze. for a moment, perhaps even for two or three days, their faces made gentle smiles, and you can just about see them if you look closely. and then, as though their time was up, they parted, and the landscape became quiet again, and he remained making crickets as before.

nietzsche, in his seventy-five aphorisms said, "in parting.- not how one soul comes close to another but how it moves away shows me their kinship and how much they belong together." somehow in all this one senses he was right...

curtain call...

minor chords and accidentals...

nick manoloff published a number of how to play guitar guides, books, and sheet music in the 1930's. this beautiful art deco looking accompaniment guide was published in 1935, and came free with "book no. 1". there's a window wheel on the outside and a chord and finger position wheel on the inside so that one can spin the inner wheel to find which chords accompany which key... there's also a picture of the finger positions and major and minor key positions on the back. i really like the the idea that there are known chords called accidentals.

while looking manoloff up online i found this excerpt from an interview with bb king. apparently king began to learn guitar fingering and to read music through nick's books and most likely a little disc like this one.

"There was a guy called Nick Manoloff. Nick Manoloff had books. Guitar instruction books in the Sears Roebuck catalogue, the big one. I'd order those books and I studied them religiously, and that's how I learned to put my fingers on - learned how to tune a guitar and learned my first bit of learning how to read music. I'm a blues singer, a blues musician, but I can read music - not fast, but I do - and I learned to even write a little bit."
bb king