Getting another new guitar seems an extravagance I know but there is an irresistible pull to the loveliness of this one. How can I describe it when it needs to be played and heard not just viewed. It has that very distinct dobro sound which resonates a particular slide technique - I love it. And I like the authenticity of the sound it produces. But I was also thinking about authenticity too. Phillips in referring to the poet John Clare says, 'We don't have to believe in authenticity, we just have to remember and believe in what we thought authenticity was like.' And Clare is saying that 'what we value most about ourselves - pleasure, pain and surprise - is made possible by our belief in authenticity.' I'm not sure. I guess my feeling on this is, as long as I continue to seek authenticity, whether it does or does not exist is an irrelevance. Indeed Pablo Neruda takes us that way when he said the Future is Space:
The future is space,
earth-coloured space,
cloud-coloured,
colour of water, air,
black space with room for all snow,
for all music..
and now in this discovered space
let's fly to a pure solitude
As our old friend Walter Benjamin might have said, had he met Pablo, 'To thinking belongs not only the movement of thoughts, but likewise their standstill.' And there we go again, flying Icarus-like to the solitude of the discovered, standstill place. I am practising those Walking Blues:
