Don't You Know It's Gonna Be, Shooby Do, All Right

First, as an exercise in relaxation, do the following.  Go to YouTube and type in "Sungha Jung i will."  That's really all you have to do to brighten your mood for the rest of the day.  If a smile does not break out on your face while you listen to this absolutely amazing twelve year old kid from South Korea work his way through the Paul McCartney tune, then there isn't really much I can do for you anyway.  What makes it so beautiful is that Sungha, who looks nine, not twelve, and plays the acoustic guitar with an angelic grace and touch that few mortals ever achieve in anything, does not appear to take himself seriously at all.  Maybe that's the way it is with genius: no straining after effect.  If you need further proof, then dial up his take on Glen Hansard's "Falling Slowly," for which there are probably a hundred lesson videos by other guitarists showing you how to play it.  Sungha's arrangement, and playing, will simply blow your mind.  Same tune, but so different.

Somewhere back in the 1960's Paul McCartney dreamt up a simple melody based on a routine chord progression found in half of all folk songs and a great deal of other music besides, and then wrote lyrics (with John Lennon) suggesting a somewhat whimsical, yet nevertheless steadfast, love for a woman he apparently has not yet met.  "For if I ever saw you/ I didn't catch your name/but it never really mattered/I will always feel the same."

It was on the 68th take on September 17, 1968, that the Beatles got "I Will" just the way they wanted it and added it to the White Album.  It runs 1 minute 53 seconds.  Forty years later a Korean boy brought that beautiful little ditty back to life.

"The world is wide and full of marvelous people."  Oscar Wilde said that, and it behooves us to remember it.  These seem like tumultuous times, and indeed they are, but paroxysms often precede paradigm shifts.  America could not keep going the way it was going and so it will not.  It will change and I strongly suspect it will change for the better.  Humility, whenever it is learned, is a good thing, and America will be profoundly humbled by the changes underway.

In the meantime, listen to Sungha and bear in mind that time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.  Meanwhile, I'll give this "I Will" arrangement a shot.  It's in D major, I can see that, even if I can't follow a lot of the up-fretboard stuff.  But I'm inspired.  Out of the mouths of babes, you see. In youth is the renewal of the world.