The Mockingbird has returned

I did not notice the presence of mockingbirds until the summer of 2010. I remember I heard one singing at Hill and Wood this night as I was walking to Fellini's to take part in live band karaoke.

Last summer, I heard one repeatedly in my backyard, singing everything he could all through the night. Every time he sang, I would stop and listen and marvel at all he knew how to sing. With no-one to compete with, that little guy would sing until the sun came up, playing all the hits.

My friend this week told me that this bird was likely an un-mated male who was singing to find a mate. Nothing now seems more appropriate.

I've spent the last hour playing guitar scales up and down. My friend Jeffry told me I should begin playing scales, and I listened. I'd definitely reached a point in my improvised music where I wasn't going to go any further without learning some serious fundamentals of how other people play the guitar.

Since leaving Court Square, I've not felt the need to improvise as much. Or rather, there didn't seem to be any inspiration to make me believe I deserved to play the guitar. Relationships tend to also make me feel like I have something to say, and I'm currently not in one, and afraid to sing too much about the last one.

I'm sure I will, though. I play music to try to get myself to let go, to allow the notes to propel my stream of consciousness into something that captures a moment.

I have one clip that captures the last time I was in Court Square Tavern by myself, on the last night I was there by myself, at the end of a Saturday night. I was to go out with friends, but I had my guitar, and I needed to play. So I did, while I could, and it's the end of that time.

And when I did, I somehow knew it was the last time, so I needed to capture what was going on in my life. So, I have a four minute clip that documents where I sing about the first time I stepped into my ex-wife's house and seeing a picture of her and her wife-to-be, and then how I'm in a place I don't where to be, and then a general song that takes the passion I felt at that moment about wanting to live, about wanting to experience life, but having all of these memories in that place, and then wanting to move past it.

And now it's been a month, and the mockingbird still sings.