October 4 -- One of the joys of being a guitar student of Rick Fielding's is that he has an immense repertoire which you can tap into at any moment simply by saying, "How does Dave Van Ronk play?" (fill in any name that interests you), and he will show you how they play, their tricks, and how the sound they get got that way. We were working on dropped D tuning the other night, and on my way home I suddenly realised why certain Beatle songs sound the way they do (if I remember correctly, the period of time they were in India coincided with learning about dropped D from Donovan who was with them). What happened was that a certain sound pattern entered my head, and I recognised that it was part of a Beatle song which I have known for 25 years, and never knew until now what was it that made it work, and why it was so effective.
About 3 in the morning, I woke up and had a startling thought. In my head are hundreds, thousands of beautiful music patterns -- old folk songs, pop music, Chopin Ballades, Beethoven quartets -- that I have picked up over a lifetime of listening, and for most of them I have no idea how they do what they do. But they are in there. So I am carrying around a set of beautiful coded messages that I cannot yet decode, even though I can call them up and have them affect me. I am saturated with vast treasures I carry around, through no effort on my part, and may one day be able to open. I held my head in my hands for a moment, just to survive the largeness of the thought: there are precious musical things in here, in my head, that have nothing to do with me -- I am just their carrier, the box they are stored in, these musico-genetic puzzles, until the day I crack them open, finally, if ever. (p.t.)