My Jesus Wore A Crown Of Broken Guitar Strings (an improvisational apologia)

So, in case you were wondering (I highly doubt) where I have been for the past 5 days, why I have not "bloggered" anything, or why I had to catch up and view/comment on your entries all today, I was in enjoying a little bit of wilderness. For 4 days I was "living" on top of a mountain--albeit small--in the middle of the great Granite state of New Hampshire with nothing more on my person than an acoustic guitar and a fresh pair of socks. Accompanying me (or perhaps I was the one doing the accompanying) were two high school friends of mine: Jeff and Mike. Now, Jeff and Mike were fellow classmates of mine, as well as bandmates (Jeff being an ex-player of trumpet, and Mike that of trombone)--although they never pursued musical undertakings to the extent that I have; and I spent most of my adolescence in the company of Mike, as we were in Boyscouts together on many-a camping trip. This past year (our freshman year) they went about the arduous task of teaching themselves to play guitar, and have since come out into the summer having accomplished much, musically speaking. Now, Jeff is all into rap, jungle, noise, and all this other crazy [insert genre]-core whozeewhatsit (which tends to get on my nerves sometimes, though I'll never admit it, as Jeff usually rants on and on about his clearly biased and ill-educatedly hyper-analysis of why so-and-so is better than so-and-so), whilst Mike enjoys folk, bluegrass, red hot chili peppers, and a sprinkling of eclectic potpourri. In fact, Mike started playing some Beirut, which instantly brought my mind back down to DC, recalling fondly-found memories of Danielle and of the planting of seedlings that seemed to bequeath my first year of the college experience. Amongst the trees, sky, mountains, rocks, dirt, bug bites, spider webs, sunburns, fog, rain, wood chucks, and dirty socks, there was still music playing (and not a single broken guitar string, except the ones in my head and heart).