[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Blues

Somewhere in the neighbourhood, fairly close to hand, someone is 
practicing the guitar on his (her? more likely his, around here) 
electric guitar.

He's good. He's quite good, in fact. I am an inept guitarist, but I 
know enough to know good blues playing, and he's just fine. He's 
doing that good blues thing of smearing the notes around, looking for 
shadings, letting the notes hang and then ending with an abrupt leap, 
doing sudden runs.

There's a problem, though. This music is *loud*.

It's not so much the neighbourhood I worry about; it's still early. 
Too early for little kids to go to bed, too early for the blues to be 
a neighbourhood problem.

It's the guitarist I worry about. Playing an electric guitar at this 
decibel level is seriously damaging to a person's hearing. I have the 
same concern when some young'un goes by with the car radio booming so 
deep and so loud that it sets the fire hydrants wobbling and makes 
the manhole covers dance.

We seem to have lost a good deal of consciousness about actions and 
consequences, and that is scary. It's as though we're walking in some 
sort of dream world, where we live in the present moment without 
regard for the future. And in a sense, that's right. C.S. Lewis 
rightly said that the present is the closest we ever get to eternity.

But Lewis also said that thought for the future's needs is part of 
the present's duty, and that part of the equation we seem to have 
lost. The guitarist is hanging in in the present, very fully in this 
particular moment. It's just that the future hangs over him like a 
wave, and the future (if he goes on this way) is going to entail some 
heavy hearing damage. That's perhaps where lovers of the loud blues 
do not want to go, like those who are so convinced of the imminence 
of the Second Coming that environmental issues are right off their screen.

In fact, I am not one to boast about this, because I have taken 
approximately zero care of my health, assuming that this sturdy 
donkey of a body who is also myself will carry me through regardless. 
Yes, I know this is as dumb as a sack of hammers. But I never point 
out someone else's error without finding it in myself.

A beloved lawyer of my acquaintance (you know who you are!) talks 
about "duty of care". Another good phrase is "due diligence". It has 
to do with responsibility. The guitarist is responsible to his or her 
future self to behave in ways that conserve his or her hearing, 
without unnecessary damage -- because trust me, there will be damage anyway.

You said what?







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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in 
no other way. -- Mark Twain