I found a great posting on a popular website where a number of bluegrass fans posted their favorite, sad bluegrass songs. Find them here. I have been performing some bluegrass on the mandolin at local open mics this year and some of the feedback was pretty much summed up in the description of this thread: "Bluegrass can be both the happiest and saddest genre." Only, I found most of my songs were of the happy variety even though I am not necessarily happy all the time. Being positive is great, and happy is a positive emotion. Life is not always happy, however, and being able to express myself through music is very important. I began to work in an old bluegrass book I had, finding a song called "Billy in the Low Ground." The song is an allusion to being dead and buried.
Death, equally fascinating as Life. I am glad this post in /r/bluegrass presented itself when it did because I was looking for just such a collection of songs. The problem can be an overwhelming number of songs, and not enough time to filter them all to get to some good ones, or some songs that really speak to you. This list has narrowed the search for me and now I can do some listening and find ones I like and get to learning them as soon as humanly possible. I seem to have a problem with my attention and that's why I say "as soon as humanly possible." I have a vision about my music and I have not been writing this vision down, or anything down, for that matter. I hope I can get back into the groove of shipping new ideas.
This blog initially was started to ship new ideas, new ideas in business or economics. Since its creation in 2010 I have been negligent and I also see other areas in my life where my diligence has been lacking. I will be making changes in that area. The changes were borne of my dissatisfaction in my music. Like most everything in my life, I put it aside and was distracted, leaving me further and further behind each day I did not continue yesterday's progress. This lack of continuation is depressing me because I cannot get my thoughts out of the past and become anxious due to the idea of having to catch up from so far behind. Each new journey begins with a single step.
My first step was to create a list of the areas I would like to accomplish objectives. Each area has a few subtopics to work on. I began with my blog from the roll of the dice. I have told myself to work for an hour on each objective and that should keep me busy, productive, and my mind off of my past and my head out of the uncertainties of the future. Lately, I have been frustrated with my life due to the lack of consistency and when I would pick up my mandolin to play, and only "happy" songs would emerge, even though I wanted to express my discomfort, I would quit playing, perpetuating the cycle of negligence. So, in my attempt to search for "sad" songs, I have rediscovered my blog and hope to keep all my objectives in the rotation.
I believe the first new song of the sad variety will be "Wayfaring Stranger." Another objective is to create some instructional videos of playing mandolin for YouTube. Look for this song in the future, eventually!
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