Gnarled Shoulder

Hello, it’s been a while. A horrible new year is upon us, and we here at Excessive Vibrato Dot Com have a few updates for you, some awful, some delicious, including a new song on the mandolin, which you may see immediately by scrolling all the way down, if you wish. Here are the updates:

I have turned 40 years old, which is deeply unfortunate, but I did so at the seaside, which is the very definition of fortunate.
I witnessed Ulmo, Lord of Waters, rise from the seabed at twilight, kelp streaming from his cerulean beard, and utter a blasphemous incantation in the Valarin tongue.
I interviewed one of my most longstanding musical heroes, the best mandolinist in the world, Chris Thile, for issue 58 of the Fretboard Journal (out now). We talked about his new Bach album. It was exceedingly sick. He said that I have, quote, “good ears,” which as you may imagine made me feel all sorts of feelings, and emotions as well.
I have a very weird short story in the newest issue of the speculative magazine The Colored Lens. It is called “The Stump Grinder” and it is about a stump grinder. A mystical one. It is about some other things as well, like the uselessness of punitive incarceration. Possibly the strangest thing I have ever written.
Those two pieces are only available in print, alas. But they are both very handsome magazines that would look nice on your oversized coffee table made of skulls. Unfortunately The Colored Lens is only buyable via the vile Am*zon, but hopefully they’ll eventually post the story on their website. Not sure when.
Not one but three (3) silver ravens visited me at the hour of my birth, weaving between the raindrops and forming with their wings the shape of an ancient and unspeakable sigil.
I got a new Lego set. For adults by the way.
There was a fire. I’ve been trying to sell my 1957 Gretsch tenor guitar on consignment, first via a local music shop that violently lowballed me, and then via Archtop.com, which consists of one (1) very sweet old guy named Joe who works out of his house in Leschi. Or did. The day after I dropped it off with Joe, his entire fucking house burned down in some freak electrical fire, along with all his guitars, including, presumably, the Gretsch. No word on insurance yet. Joe and his wife are safe, but I think they lost pretty much everything.
Every day the president and/or his army of lonely men in Punisher t-shirts commit some insane new crime, and in response every Democratic leader issues a statement indistinguishable from Buster Bluth going, “I don’t agree with your dirty doings here, but I will defend with my life your right to do it.” Somehow it’s really hard to internalize this, but there is no bottom to this depravity; there is nothing the far right can do to fully lose the support of their base. We’ve seen them do Nazi salutes on live TV, shoot innocent people in the face in broad daylight, bomb fishing boats and brag about it, post unambiguous white supremacist slogans, et fucking cetera. America has always preyed on vulnerable people, of course, but it feels so blatant now. Not saying I’d prefer it was more hidden. I’d prefer no fascism at all. I just don’t understand how the sorts of evangelicals I grew up with can support the most nakedly unchristian people to ever go to and fro upon the earth, and walk up and down in it.
I don’t know how to transition from the growing horrors of the world to my goofy little musical shit. Oh well.
I wrote a little mandolin etude in B-minor and G-minor, more or less, with some pretty messed up chords in between. I recorded it the day before my birthday whilst on a writing retreat, which was, again, at the seaside, if you even care. It’s called “Gnarled Shoulder” due to: I got a gnarled shoulder. Did I wrench it in the midst of some heroic feat such as foiling a crime or stopping a careening pram from rolling into traffic? I did not. I slept on it at an angle slightly less salubrious than normal while being nearly 40. You can watch me painfully play the song below. By the way I wrenched the other one a couple weeks later. Awoke in agony. Okay thanks, here’s some mandolin.