Perspective.

Wow, this is weird. I'm writing this blog from within my Mac Dashboard - for those of you without a Mac, you will have no idea what that is, so I'll explain. Basically, there's this little button I press on my keyboard and a screen comes up with widgets on, a bit like the widgets on Windows Vista - and a little bit like Facebook applications, I guess. Cool, huh? Anyway, I got a little Blogger widget so now I can post to my blog without even having to go online. Great.

This blog is called perspective, and that's because last night I found it. For the past 7 years I've been playing guitar, but for the past 2 I'd say I haven't really been doing anything new - I'd kind of got it into my head that I didn't need to. I play at open mics and people still clap and tell me they enjoy hearing me play, and, for me, that has always been enough.

Skip to last night and I'm sitting at the Tower Bar with George on a huge sofa waiting for Slow Club to play. It's nearly the end of Freshers week and most people are knackered/ill and are therefore staying in or going bowling, but we'd seen flyers about a free gig tonight, and now there we were, waiting patiently, alongside about ten other people who obviously also had nothing better to do.

Then without any warning a guy came on with an acoustic guitar and totally blew me away.

Elliott Morris is 18 years old and has been playing the guitar for 7 years, like me. Unlike me, he is a fingerstyle percussive guitarist (check out John Butler Trio if you don't know what I'm talking about). Not long after he's introduced himself as the support act, he's playing a whole band's worth of instruments just with his guitar, whilst singing. Suddenly, for me, a clap and a 'well done' isn't enough.

I got back from the gig at about midnight and by one I was whacking my guitar (okay, tapping - everyone else in my apartment was asleep) trying to make it sound like a bass drum. So far, no good. But I must try.