Sunday, March 30, 2014

With this entry I'm closing this blog and starting another. This blog was simply "David Rodriguez." A record label kindly set it up to give me a way to communicate with fans. The next will be "Thoughts over things."  I've never had much enthusiasm to write from the perspective of a musician, though well from the standpoint of critic. How appropriate that may be, is for others to judge. Honestly speaking, I've never thought of myself as musician, rather just someone who knows a little about sounds, timing and how to string words together. By changing the name of the blog, I'm hoping to gain, or perhaps reacquaint myself with my love of that last item, "stringing words together."

I gave a "last concert" in a small theater in the Hague in 2008 announcing that it would be my last.  Ten people showed up (LOL) and I suppose I was grateful for that not so subtle message. It told me a lot  about who gets to decide how, where and when and one gets to exit the staged and quit something so intrinsic, so embedded in their being, it has become a skin.  In 2012 I gave another "last concert" this time in Dordrecht for a full house, but I haven't let that go to my head. At the same time I didn't try to portray it as a last concert either. I just want to do something else.

Well, I'm leaving this skin of a guitar player. I love writing since I was a child and wrote and recited my own poems to the fourth class. I remember to this day my first poem, which was inspired by a photo of the Arizona ghost town "Jerome." The reason the poem was so important to me is because it gave the teacher reason to tell me I had talent. That was her impression as communicated to me. Whether that is true is not for me say.  However, did she like my work, she told me to keep doing it.  I was 8 years old but from that moment everything I did was oriented in the direction of writing. Coupled with the times and the exigencies of globalization, I choose to do my writing with a guitar.  However, even then it was more about writing that about playing. I hate performing, or I should say I hate the "business" of performing. For physical reasons related to post-polio it is much easier now to give up performing. To me it's about writing and then moving on, about adapting and making increasingly more out of increasingly less.  If I'm correct, then this move will be a good one. Wish me luck.

30 march 2014
David