You have to pick up The Bass, as
Mingus called
his, with audible capitals, and
think of the slow years
the wood spent as a tree, which
might well have been
enough for wood, and think of the
skill the bassmaker
carried without great thought of it
from home
to the shop and back for decades,
and know
what bassists before you have
played, and know
how much of this is stored in The
Bass like energy
in a spring and know how much
you must coax out.
How easy it would be, instead, to
pull a sword
from a stone. But what's inside the
bass wants out.
Document URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/matthews.html
Last modified: Wednesday, 18-Jul-2007 16:27:26 EDT