Subject: RE: Rick Fielding Tribute Concert, June 5
From:
Peter T.
Date: 07 Jun 04 - 09:14 AM
Thanks for the kind words. Here it is. This was the hardest thing I have ever read, to get through, partly because of the words, but partly because it was in the end, really for the first time, saying goodbye.
Rick was a fan of Bob Dylan's, I think in part because they had a similar kind of early experience, of being a young student of folk music, soaking up Folkways albums, of being fifteen years old and a sponge for every kind of music -- one day we were listening together to one or two cuts from his album Biograph, and talking about Bob Dylan's great monologue poem, "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie", which he recited at the memorial event for Woody, and which he just burned his way through, maybe the best thing he ever wrote. I have written something in the same style, though I am certainly no Bob Dylan: what I have written is really about being a student of Rick's, about the terrible loss, the loss of a true teacher, of which there are always so few, and I hope it speaks for all the students of Rick's who are here today......
LAST THOUGHTS ON RICK FIELDING
So you dream of a world out of reach and your fingers are itching and your brain is ticking away the years and you say now is the time or never and maybe it is never but you do not want to end like this, pressing your nose against the window pane of your own life -- and the stars for a brief moment relent in their indifference and they grant you a teacher who looks at you and says what do you want to know, and you don't even know that, you are so ignorant, but it has something to do with everything, and you start with the everything that is nothing, and then the miracle begins even before you are watching for it, and the everything that is nothing begins to turn into the something that is something, and that is what teaching is, it is not a miracle except the whole thing is a miracle, but he says this is the way in, and I will go with you and be your guide, and it is like a flood of water under a beached boat, and-- fearful step by stumble, like Tom Sawyer entering the cave, as your eyes become accustomed to your own darkness, you slowly realize that what you have entered is a cavern of immeasurable dimensions, and that among the loomings is this shadow figure, this guide, this teacher, whose own immeasureable dimension is part of this world of music you have crossed a threshold into.
And so there you are, week after week, and the binding curve of time asserts its grace, and one week it is Herman's Hermits and another it is Tom Ashley and another it is Dick Justice and another it is Bill Broonzy and another it is Leadbelly in Bb, and another it is carrying Son House's guitar, and another it is watching Rev. Gary Davis drunk one night and magnificent the next, and another it is a Sudbury monday morning, and another it is DADGAD as played by the original druids, and another it is that godless lesbian Amelia Earhardt, and another it is a young teenager, filching Folkways records and playing hookey to watch Bergman films, and always it is teaching, it is the secret signs, it is a person as gift.
And towards the end the bitterness arises when you realize that you know too little to make the most of what he knows, that you can begin to glimpse the magnitude of what he knows, but you are still too early in the game, and that there is no time left, that there was a lifetime of learning to learn, and there is no time left, and the question that burns and will not stop for you is where do I go when I want to know, when I cannot make the moves, when the chords make no sense, when I know there is a mystery somewhere back of the sound -- how did they do that? how can I do that? --- when the record is blurred, the notes are out of reach, there is nothing to help you, and you say, how did they do that, and he says, oh they stole that from Blind Lemon Jefferson, it is originally like this, but they changed it to cheat and make it easier, like this, and he does it, and a pool of clear knowing opens to you, or you track down this video of Lonnie Johnson and he phones you and says, I remember that suit and that guitar, and I played that guitar and when you come around next I will show you how he does that and that time never comes around and what I want to know is where do I go, the bitter question of where do you go when your teacher is dead, when your one true teacher is gone, where do you go when you want a question answered, and the selfish selfcentred question I want answered is where do you go when the person you took your questions and your answers and your puzzles and discoveries to is gone, and you have no place for them anymore, and they pile up, in your room, on the street, and in your brain, and you stumble over all those piles of unanswered questions, all those discoveries, all those tiny triumphs and large griefs, and they will not let you be, and that is what I want to know, that is, what I want to know is where do I go when the only person who could tell me is the one who is gone?
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sj
