In mid-August of last year, I came down to NYC for a weekend. A friend of mine who was out of town let me stay at his place, a studio on East 56th Street. He kept a nylon-string guitar in the corner of the apartment. I hardly play anymore, so I didn’t think much of it when I saw it.
There wasn’t much of an agenda that weekend — just a couple dinners with people I hadn’t seen in a while. Mostly I listened. But I started to get some ideas, too. I know that sounds like a simple, easy thing. But when you’ve been in a rut for so many years, new ideas can seem scary.
One of those ideas was to pick up the guitar in my friend’s apartment and record something before I went back home. Everything I needed was there in the room: the guitar, a chair, a table to prop up my phone as I sang into it…
But the song would take a little work. I started with the chords for “Pallet on Your Floor,” and wrote out a set of verses that I tweaked as I relearned the guitar part. I got stuck on the second verse, so I left it out. It’s an unfinished song — about ninety seconds. But it’s an idea that I made happen.
Since then there have been a few others.
144. 張, “Leaving This Town Blues.” Posted with LH#32: Apt 28.
