Category: The Mandolin

 

The more I learn songs on Robbie, the more connection I feel to him (and the more I practice, get better, etc.). Recently, that has included Blanco White’s “Olalla” (posted below)–which I was beyond pleased to play while my hot German boyfriend played his cards on the vocals–and fun bouncy songs like Phil Collins’ version of “You Can’t Hurry Love”.

This particular song came about by studying the chord progressions I had written down for Eddie Vedder’s “Society”. Bloody good song. I rearranged them, added glides, and found a pleasing (albeit melancholic) atmosphere. Being pleased within my own atmospheric melancholy, there was a poem I had written lying handy that I started singing along with.

And man–the more I learn on Robbie the more I love him, but the more I write with him the more I love both of us.

 

Chord pattern: C Am F G
Intro: C Am F G

Hold hands with me
My feet don’t work today
and my mind is getting
dizzy

Hold hands with me
I’ve been watching your stride
Your somber foot swing
oh, it so mesmerizes me

Hold hands with me.
hold hands with me.
Just for a moment, please,
will you hold hands with me?

My arms are light
My gaze is so easy
It’s my legs that give way
When I will them to obey

The pine needles bend beneath shakey knees
and the stiff bark snaps in my
child-like grasp

It’ll level out
eventually
but that’s so far away
so crystalized in my gaze

Hold hands with me
Hold hands with me
Just for a moment, please
Will you hold hands with me?

Hold hands with me.
My mind slips into the space
Your fingers so long and safe
embrace mine

and gently, so gently
I return to myself
my heart beat finds me
finds me so peacefully

Outro: C Am F G

 

One fine Saturday, Joachim and I found ourselves on the sands of Sand Island, Oahu eating sticky pastries and dancing in left-sweeping currents. We had brought our mandolins as well, to practice Mozart for his Oma and Opa, and tacked on some Blanco White and Eddie Vedder as well.

Another leap in time, as this cover takes us ten months past Robbie’s start date in my arms. This time featuring the absolutely dashing Joachim on vocals.

“Such is the way of the world
You can never know
Just where to put all your faith
And how will it grow

Gonna rise up
Burning black holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold

Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
Suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold

Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up
Throw down my ace in the hole”

 

 

I would like to be Cheryl in the Greenlandic bar playing “Space Oddity” to the Walter Mitty within me that gets scared at the edges of adventure. Using my chords and voice to propel me out of the chair and to jump into the moving helicopter.

Courage and thirst for adventure.

Progress!

Four months later, this version of “Rise” can spill out of Robbie.

The point is not to reach Eddie Vedder-level. The point is to get better–and look!

 

 

Progress.

To make progress, one has to start from somewhere.

To start from somewhere, one has to start.

This version of “Rise” was recorded within the first weeks of getting my mandolin and beginning to practice it.

 

I found him.

After weeks and months of fruitless searching–calling music shops, cringing at the price of new mandolins, being let down by angsty Facebook marketplace sellers named Todd–I found him. The One.

Robert the Spruce.

To be fair–my friend Marco found him. He works at the Guitar Center in Pearl City, which, if you ask me, is rather a bitch to get to via the bus network. He told me that they had gotten a used mandolin in the store, and that it would be held for at least a few weeks for police clearance etc., etc., basically: Josie, here’s your mandolin, but you’ve got to be patient. And also you have to exert a time of energy to get it.

And here he is. Safe in my arms.