Just because you're not speaking doesn't mean you have to be silent

So, there was a bit of confusion over Day of Silence, but my friends and I celebrated it yesterday. I ended up having to talk during my bio lab since we were planning an experiment, but other than that I lasted the entire day.

Now of course, one fo the interesting conflicts was my love of singing and playing. There are plenty of songs that I've been working on, and songs where I want nothing more than to sing with the strumming of the strings. One of the great things though, was that since I knew I wasn't supposed to be singing or speaking, all my attention was focused on the chords. I actually started looking at a few new songs yesterday: Goodbye Days by Yui has a very interesting chord progression, and one that's actually pretty difficult at first.

Aside from that, I took a look at Hang You Up by Yellowcard, which I'll post just as soon as I have a singer. That one's just three chords, but the progression takes some concentration.

There's also For One Day by Evermore, which I really haven't touched in a while. That has some pretty strange chords, for which I'm not even sure there are proper names.

Point is that sometimes our attention gets drawn away from what's really important to us (I actually wrote about this in my essay yesterday-- Thoreau's sacred spaces and such). I've been so caught up in the idea of performing that I've stuck with songs that are easy and safe. I have to say though, it's much more satisfying when you come back to a song that you haven't been able to play for weeks, and you finally understand the chord progression or the finger positions. In addition, it's definitely worth checking back at ultimate-guitar every month or so, since new tabs are posted.

I actually didn't realize this part at first; like we read in English (Barlow), our generation sorta tends to see the Internet as a product (like a printed book) instead of a process. Of course if you're reading a blog or on Facebook it's different; you expect it to change. But information for us has always been steady, constant. For updated information, you would just find the most recent edition of a book-- and even then, not a lot had changed. With web databases though, which can be updated whenever, new info can pop up any time. So, it's definitely worth checking on some new tabs when you start to get frustrated.

-Kal