New Direction

I think I need a new direction, I would love to keep looking at guitar and its relationship to prison, because I think it exists. However, I am having a hard time finding information that I feel good about. I guess I don't care to promote child molestors turned guitar players. It is great that they are suppossedly not hurting kids anymore but I don't really want to glorify that. So I am going to look at guitar in other areas of society.

Prison Arts Program- San Quentin

The William James Association Prison Arts Project gives inmates at San Quentin the chance to create music and other works of art within the prison walls. This gives inmates the chance to express themselves and their creativity. 90% of inmates will return to society so that may be reason enough to give them a opportunities to go in another direction.

"There are general feelings of hostility and hopelessness in prisons today and it is getting worse with overcrowding. . . Art workshops and similar programs help take us out of this atmosphere and we become like any other free person expressing our talents. Being in prison is the final ride downhill unless one can resist the things around him and learn to function in a society which he no longer has any contact with. Arts programs for many of us may be the final salvation of our minds from prison insanity. It's contact with the best of the human race. It is something that says that we, too, are still valuable."

- a prison inmate

William James Association- Prison Arts Project
http://www.williamjamesassociation.org/prison_arts.html

http://photophilanthropy.org/slideshow/gallery_peter_merts2.html

Axl Vs Johnny

It is pretty interesting that both Axl and Johnny had songs about killing women. In Delia's gone, Johnny shoots her twice because Delia was a trifling woman. Now poor Johnny was in jail and she is haunting him, he can hear her walking around all of the time.
Years later Axl sings I Used To Love Her But I Had to Kill Her. A lot of people say this song was not about killing anyone and it is really about a dog, or just a joke. I don't think that matters, because obviously Axl doesn't have some girl buried in his backyard. what is interesting is that in both songs the murderer doesn't get peace because they are haunted in some way. Axl can hear the complaining and Johnny can hear her walking around. They are both really great songs, and really address the other side of love. I think it is funny that both artists are talented, and put on a good show but there is a great parallel between them. I think it really shows how ahead of his time Johnny Cash was.

Delia's Gone
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Used to Love Her
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My Guitar

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I have finally bought an electric guitar of my own. It is a used jagmaster. I guess Kurt Cobain designed it by combining two different guitars. Rumour has it anyway. It is pretty sweet though to finally be able to play rock songs the way they are meant to be played.

However, the song that I am going to be working on now is Once Upon A Time by the Pogues. One of my favorite songs ever.

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