Breaking strings on my guitars

I began learning to play guitar in July 1983, and for almost twenty years, I broke strings all the time, whether on acoustic or electric guitar. Only in the early 2000s, when I began to play sitting down while accompanying my friend Markus Bachmann for his Swiss German songs, did I stop breaking so many strings. I still kept the percussive style that had perhaps led me to cut through them like butter, but I apparently became a less aggressive player when I played sitting down rather than standing. I thought of this today when I broke a string while practicing, which still happens far less often than it used to. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 January 2025) 

What I’ve done on Facebook over the years, and the need for alternatives

I joined Facebook in 2007 because my friend Geoff Brock wanted to play Scrabble with me. Over the years, I've created multiple networks of people to stay in touch with: family in the United States and elsewhere; friends there, in Germany and in many other countries; poets and writers all over the world; former Basel English students; and musicians I have heard and met in Basel and elsewhere. I've also established two traditions of my own: sending people birthday poems and writing my daily prose. But with various recent decisions made by founder Mark Zuckerberg, it's time to start thinking about alternatives, as I did when I left Twitter for Mastodon. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 January 2025)

A noontime concert of solo saxophone by Nicole Johänntgen

Last week, I learned my friend Roli Frei would be performing at the Theater Basel Foyer at noon today. As my Spanish lesson takes place there on Tuesdays from 11 am to noon, I was looking forward to hearing Roli play. But yesterday, I heard that the concert had been called off because Roli was ill (get well soon, Roli!). This morning, I learned from a Facebook post of his that saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen would be replacing him, but then I forgot about that. Then, when I was in the bathroom after my Spanish lesson, I heard a saxophone, remembered Nicole was playing, and stayed to enjoy her non-stop forty-minute performance. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 January 2025) 

My father and the first two albums by The Doors

My father bought the first two albums by The Doors in 1967, the year they were released: "The Doors" in January and "Strange Days" in September. I still have those two LPs, and the vinyl is incredibly thick, something I noticed even in the late 1970s when I started collecting LPs of my own, with the new releases being much thinner. Decades later, my father, who stopped listening to rock music in the course of the 1970s, said that The Doors had been his favorite band of the great performers of the 1960s, and he explicitly singled out the role of John Densmore's drumming in what he liked about their sound. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 January 2025)

Songs by Bertolt Brecht that I knew when I was young, thanks to Judy Collins and The Doors

Even when I was very young and was over a decade away from beginning to learn German, I already knew about Bertolt Brecht, thanks to Judy Collins and The Doors. On her 1966 album "In My Life", which my parents owned, Collins recorded "Pirate Jenny" ("Seeräuber-Jenny") from "The Three-Penny Opera" ("Die Dreigroschenoper", 1928), which made a strong impression on me even as a child: "And the ship, the Black Freighter / Runs the flag up its masthead / And a cheer rings the air." And on their eponymous 1967 debut, The Doors recorded "Alabama Song" from "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" ("Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny", 1930). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 January 2025)

Guy de Maupassant’s “Sur l’eau” (1876) in Virginia Woolf’s “The Years” (1937)

In "Present Day", the final chapter of Virginia Woolf's novel "The Years" (1937), Peggy Pargiter, bored at a party, takes a book off a shelf and opens it: "He'll say what I'm thinking, she thought as she did so. Books opened at random always did." The book Peggy opens is in French: "La médiocrité de l'univers m'étonne et me révolte, la petitesse de toutes choses m’emplit de dégoût, la pauvreté des êtres humains m’anéantit." Woolf doesn't identify the book or the author, but the passage is from Guy de Maupassant's "Sur l'eau" (1876), which was published shortly before the first chapter in the novel, "1880" – and long before Peggy is born. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 January 2025)

Three perspectives on success in songs by Dire Straits

On "Sultans of Swing", from the eponymous debut by Dire Straits (1978), the band Sultans of Swing plays swing in a bar on Fridays. One member, Harry, "doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene"; that is, he isn't worried about success. The album's next song, "In the Gallery", recounts the life of another Harry, a sculptor, who only gets "in the gallery" after he dies "in obscurity". Listening to the album the other day, I was reminded of another perspective on success in a Dire Straits song: "Money for Nothing" ("Brothers in Arms", 1985), in which an appliance salesman envies the musicians earning "money for nothing" for an MTV video. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 January 2025)