CCXXIV - a new hope

Two hundred and twenty four. It's nice to say it, it has a nice cadence to it. Everyone wants a nice round number to hang their hat on, but when you're writing the good write against nothing of historical record to speak of, two hundred and twenty four seems like a good deal of a number. It's a lot of posts, a lot of words here and there. I don't feel like I've arrived, when I think of this number, but I feel like I'm far, far away from when I first started walking. That's the trick to it, isn't it? Putting one foot in front of the other, you get somewhere eventually. Leaving is brave, isn't it? I think the excitement of entering a different world, the joy of moving forward, being anew in the sense of stepping fresh into a new world, casts out my fear. Moving makes me feel safe. It always has.

As for moving, I think the theory is that we all live in a space-time reality, so if we don't move in Cartesian, three-dimensional space, we still "move" at the speed of light on the fourth, i.e. time axis (see: link). So imagine it as you, sitting there, warping¹ ahead in time (it forms a weird little graph, fourth dimensional, can't be pictured - think melded toroids, past and future cones of information, etc.). The theory goes that the faster you move in reality, the slower you project on the time scale - since the speed of light in space-time is always constant, it acts as a limit by forcing time to vary; see: link. Well, imagine that. I once daydreamed, in a primary school Chinese class, that everybody had their own little time bubble - you could add hours if you wanted, or less, to your own bubble, but you had to sync with someone before you could be with them. It was a translucent green bubble in my mind, I think you used a sort of watch to set it. So it's interesting, years and years later, to find out that everybody has, not only a subjective (which is to say, individualistic) sense of time passing, but that time passes differently if you move at different speeds. Imagine that². Sure, it's on a scale of 10 to the minus bajillion, but it makes a solid, physical difference (as the clocks on space satellites show). And if you kinda step a little bit further back, everyone kinda sets their own schedules in life anyway. An hour here, an hour there. Messages waiting to be read later on. We're worlds apart here, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Time is essentially, necessarily, dogmatically, enigmatic. We have conventional ways to deal with it, one moment to another³, and abstractly theoretical ways to represent it⁴, but that's about all we can say.

¹ The metaphors are regrettably mixed - "warping" is a sometime reference to a sort of space-time skip, like the concept of a "worm-hole" connecting two parts of the fabric, rather than a smooth transition; but the streams aren't crossed (classic ghostbusters reference).

² Can you imagine what real time passing is like? If I could paraphrase Borges, time is not necessarily an infinite line; it could be a finite line with infinite points in between, each of which is neverending and inconceivable.

³ A moment - what a shorthand! The audacity - to transmogrify the passing present into a brief amount of time. 

⁴ It is posited that the shortest meaningful quantum of time is the Planck unit for time, i.e. the time it takes for light to move one effing Planck length in a vacuum. It's short, really short - in the sense that we cannot predict what happens on a scale shorter than that - none of our crazy theories work (see link).

I was thinking to myself, the other day, that I haven't written anything for so long. Haven't done any real writing for so long. It's one of those things that bugs you, isn't it? Beating on, rafts against the tide. Every week passes like the next, you run out of ketchup and buy another bottle. Clean the floor trap, turn on the vacuum machine, spray chain lubricant for the bike. Take grandma and the kids out to lunch, run in the afternoon, fry an egg with tomatoes. I mean, what is this? Faded, lime green table walls, office keyboards, browsing the phone in the toilet, eyes firmly on paper during meetings. What fills life with joy, when is it the time when leaving turns vital? How can I only be living between the spaces, the interstices pre/post the commute? No, no, no. Time can't weigh so heavily. A plan must be had. (Attenborough's voice: it is had).

I made a friend recently. She finds me funny. I think we're going to be alright. How do you describe feeling fond for a woman? A sense of pervading desire. I was thinking the other day of how to describe what "love" means. A self-centred desire to own something about one you love - it's a needy thing - chiefly, time and physical space, inner, secret space, suppleness, tenderness, warm scents and soft textures, coupled with a dream, an idealised future together, of what is possible, what is at hand, the appearance and form of a man and his good wife, handling the world together, forgoing other sources of fulfillment (and to the envy of all, delicious). That idealised thing is a sort of trap, one begins to suspect, self illusionment. It's not pessimism talking, it's a knowledge that idealism is always fraught with something. It carries you away. Learning to live in satisfaction with the present as it presents itself, reality per se, is a real sense of joy, plain as it is. But to give up the self-sustaining notion is also a part of the deal, to give away time spent in contemplation, a relationship one has, inner self to the world. I am afraid, I think, of being tired. In Chinese, 倦了. It's my deepest bête noire, I've always known it, the dark beast, as it knows me, as it is me. Well, we'll see. Yeah, I believe we're going to be alright.

CCXXIII - taking after Wesley

What is the nature of faith, and is it something which is properly exercised by man, or is it something which is prompted by the spirit of God? I have long wondered after these questions. For you see, the questions navigate a riddle of individual choice and divine election.

There are verses which state that grace is the gift of God; I do not think that the verses place faith as the gift of God (reader, bear with me as I draw a distinction between grace and faith). In Ephesians: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. That seems to me to stand squarely with the explanation in Hebrews: that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yes, things hoped for - hoped for by man. I have heard a preacher comment, in passing, that the spirit of God might hover over a man, in analogy as the spirit of God hovered over the waters, on the formless earth. It is a poetic case.

So it seems to go like this: one hears the message, one examines the intellectual case, and finding it incomplete, perhaps foolish, yet one might come to choose faith - confessing and believing, thereafter one is filled with the spirit, and one knows the love of God. In Corinthians: Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

I think this faith simpliciter is properly exercised by man; and, reserving room for the omniscience and sovereignty of God, I do not think faith is in any way animated by the machinations of the spirit of God. Were it not the case, I would regard that as being unfair - in the sense that choice means something. Who could resist choosing, were faith sprung by the spirit? As I see it, choice, meaningful choice, as we intellectually understand choice, is enshrined in the word, a zeroth law. In Genesis: Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. In Deuteronomy: See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil ... therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. I would not accept that one cannot choose to reject the spirit, even at this time. In Luke: Et noluistis. In Isaiah: I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.

Now, this is not to be taken as any argument for the glorification of choice, no. Righteousness by faith, and not by works - indeed, choice comprising faith. It is silly to say that the exercise of choice takes away from glory of divine salvation. So the spirit, coming to man after choosing faith, brings knowledge of God the father, and shows his love.

With such sight^{1 2}, with love at hand, faith is no longer needed, as Reverend Wesley argues: all the glory of faith before it is done away which arises hence, that it ministers to love. It is the great temporary means by which God has ordained to promote that eternal end. ... And it was only when love was lost by sin that faith was added, not for its own sake, nor with any design that it should exist any longer than until it had answered the end for which it was ordained - namely, to restore man to the love from which he was fallen. (The Law Established Through Faith, 1750) That sits well with Corinthians: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. And further in James: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. This seems to me to run alongside the proposition that faith is man's choice; faith being the means to the ends of love. After choosing faith, we find ourselves compelled by love. The spirit gives proximity, but only after acceptance. Can love be spurned? Surely! Hence I argue, faith is our own. Being drawn to God by volition, and not by the spirit, the sanctity of choice is preserved.

¹ Wesley: Love is the end, the sole end, of every dispensation of God, from the beginning of the world to the consummation of all things. And it will endure when heaven and earth flee away; for "love" alone "never faileth." Faith will totally fail; it will be swallowed up in sight, in the everlasting vision of God.

² In Corinthians: For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. .... For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

In other words, this argument is for emphasis to be shifted properly from faith to love, to characterise Christian Faith instead as faith and Christian Love; all of it being called, Grace. Seen in that light, it does the sovereignty of God's grace no disservice to say that this rather meagre proposition of faith is exercised strictly by man's choice. I take this view. To the patient sceptic, it may seem duplicitous to exchange terms this way, to replace something fancied, such as faith, with something corporeal, such as love, but I would say in response to such a charge that this love forever remains vulnerable to doubt - doubt of the invisible. Yet is not doubt something which all loves must in time endure, even of the invisible? Returning now, I feel it in my soul, in my following after Christ in all these years - by faith I opened a door. In Revelations: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

========

NB. This exercise, in which I have tried to set out the plan of the bible, in single words, has prefigured the foregoing discourse. Words in italics represent the actions properly attributable to man.

beginning
creation
proximity
warning
disobedience
expulsion
death

covenant
faith
righteousness

slavery
cry
deliverance

law
temple
commandments
choice
violation
ordinances
neglect

promised land
conquer
kings
tyranny
idolatry
prophets
stubbornness
judges
wickedness

subjugation
remnant
return

messiah
sacrifice
grace
confess
believe
faith
salvation
justification
spirit
truth
know
love
obedience
sanctification
restoration

CCXXXII - a treatise of my being old

I have been thinking lately about what it means to get older, how I am getting older. To be specific, I have been thinking about the difference, which is a bit of a stark way to put it, between myself as I am now and myself as a younger man, coming of age. I've been reading a little of John Updike's collected works, starting with the volume of his earlier stories, as a promise to myself which has been standing for about half a year. The earlier stories he writes are typically about a male character, having either a wife or taking a fancy in someone. The male character is usually not fully composed, I would say a little self-centred, having some airs but not quite conceited, lacking a little self-control without being impulsive, judgmental in terms of social class and appearance, even a little snobbish, and yet at the same time, quietly reflective, vaguely, anxiously self-aware, feeling keenly his own conscience, and awkwardly fixated on matters of principle, sometimes short-sightedly, sometimes painfully so. As events pass and conversations transpire, with self-absorbed contemplation, and with knowing such emotions as inferiority, a little spite, and vexing desire, these male characters usually come to a sort of full-circle self-realisation, an awareness of their own emotional edges, misconceived intentions, and yet, in the self-knowledge, some part shame and some part relief. It reminds me of the Borges story of the avatar man, which ends with the words, "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him." (The Circular Ruins, 1940) I love Borges. I love him with a pride one has for a grandfather who writes unearthly good literature. Naturally, I have already promised myself to read Borges again, jumping the queue. The day is only so long, and only so many books can be so meaningfully enjoyed. Updike's first bound volume is a beautiful one, covered with dark blue fabric, and printed with bible-paper thin sheets. I hold it very, very carefully to read. Borges' uses stiff manuscript, and is slightly jangled on its edges, like the irregular crusts of thin, chipped rock on a high, dry mountain. It also smells a bit more paper-rich, a bit more complex, like a well kept tome in an old library.

To get older. The premise is of course, the ever-present present, the irresistible illusion that the present is wholly meaningful, necessary and sufficient, and thus also an easy source of self-irony. The past so easily seems lighter, simpler, memorable. I have thought often about the things that I have become in my older age, the things I have grown to accept as part of being thirty three, or the things that I do not even think twice about doing, about being, about adopting as part of the person I am. There is football, I was playing a simple game of "tennis" with a younger man, a game which involves shooting into the other goal from farther than half-court, and in which neither player may use his hands. The younger fellow kept blasting away at it with the ball with his stronger foot, and I kept trying to curl it gently in, alternating feet. I recognised myself in him, and I thought how ironic it is that I now try to guide the ball in. I thought of explaining to him that he probably had a better shot of it by shooting more meaningfully, more accurately, instead of spanking it and hoping it would fly in. But I felt that I should not have taken the advice well if I were him, at his age. It's just a thing where advice is not much appreciated, it brings a kind of inferiority to listen to advice, it's a kind of thievery of a means of self-expression, and of the joy in the genius of self-evaluation and correction. I say this all the time, I like to figure it out on my own. Well, as an older man, I still think it maybe one hundred percent of the time, when it comes to certain things, like football, and writing, and many other things besides. I like to figure it out, to get a rough internal measure of the thing, based on my mental-spiritual web of thought, understanding and belief, before relying on an external benchmark. Of course, the score didn't matter, but the important thing is not to show up the other fellow. Well, that probably comes from growing older as well. Playing the right way, hard, tough, and fairly, for all its utility, is appreciated only grudgingly. I think everyone should play hard, tough and fair, but it hardly happens. It is a bastard variant of the "will to power" concept Nietzsche proposes - everybody wants to show off what he can do, because he feels good doing so, but if he has to or it looks like he tries hard to do it, it becomes laborious and well, uncool. And so, God forbid, one should practice the fundamentals.

Being older. Being older means sighing a little more. My grandma used to get on me for sighing, long and sometimes relentedly. She didn't think young people should sigh, that they had little cause to regret so mournfully. Maybe it's a matter of perspective, from a woman born during the war. You know, being older means understanding that perspective is determinative, in the same way that behavioural science comprises the hugely important socio-culturo psyche that utilitarian analysis takes as assumed. My grandmother was born during the war, imagine that. Sometimes I look at the buildings around me and I think of how it would have been in the days when war seemed imminent, with all its dread. Perspective is a funny thing. From a child of the atomic age to a child of the information age, it's incredible how different our lives are. I wonder if we float a long a little too easily on these latter-day promises of connectivity, efficiency and triviality. Yes, there's that. Being old, I feel that the handphone is a plague, a crutch that has become a crux. There's this deep unhappiness I get from being with someone who looks at the phone - it seems similar to being amongst the cave dwellers Socrates and Plato described, who prefer security in ignorance and darkness rather than stepping out into the bright sunshine, into the light of understanding. The phone and all its minor distractions seem so wholly stupid, so trivial, so little worth our attentions. But back to sighing, I think sighing is great, I feel that a good sigh takes the air out of a lot of frustration, even if it sounds a little inauspicious, a little discourteous. I feel that sighing is the physical manifestation of my reconciling with events, and with a good sigh the finality of a compromise feels complete.

The truer tests of being older, I feel, are two: in cherishing solitude, and in accepting that romance is one of those helpless things you have to kind of navigate around rather than towards.

Solitude is one of those things, I think as a younger guy it's so difficult to wrap your head around it. It kind of peters around a bit of social ineptness, a shunning of multifarious social situations, requiring fluidity and calm in various masses of people. To be highbrow with the nerds and to be slapdash with the clownies, also everything else in between, and of course, not to be self-conscious. Solitude is difficult, it is different. It is a sense of self-preservation, but more than that, of the pervading importance of identity and innermost rigidity. But it is difficult to set aside the familiarity and low commonality of social interaction, it is difficult to forsake, in a way, fraternal steadfastness and brotherly bonds. To accept that never again would I turn to another person to commiserate, to mourn, to hold on to in times of trouble. Solitude is often self-fulfilling, people can sense a person who holds back in the presence of company. So that itself is delicate, to cherish solitude without being cold. Well, there is frankness, and a sense of purpose, to commend it. But there is also patience, and I think patience is one of those things which is wholly contextual. It is silly to say of someone that he is a patient man or woman, without setting out the conditions in which, presumably, one was patient. Nevermind, back to solitude. Solitude is being quite glad to be alone, and to not feel left out of something; to feel that what one has, in the present, and alone with one's thoughts, is not only better, but that it is truly good and worth seeking. To know that genuine, frank and polite disinterest is respectable is wonderful, peaceful solitude even in company. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha teaches that suffering includes these five kinds - to be born, to grow old, to grow sick, to be far from the ones you love, and to be near to those you do not love. Solitude seems to sit meditatively between the last two, but I think it underlies much of his teaching and philosophy.

Romance, probably I have had more cause to regret than take joy of, but it is not an aching kind of regret, more of a foppish regret. It's funny, the older I get, the more I think of Gatsby and his great old love. In the end, jilted, all lost. He was too late, he was too unfortunate, and his love and her love measured little. I think of Gatsby, and of Carraway's impression of his mystery, that when Gatsby looked at you, he made it seem like you were the only one in the world. And I think he meant Gatsby's genuinity, or genuineness, I don't think he meant it as Gatsby's ability to charm an illusion on someone. That's such a lovely way to be a person. Yes, I think of myself as a bit of Gatsby, with my old love, with my longing, with my solitude. Staring at a green light in the night, standing at the end of a dock, from across the water. And finally, for the dream to die, for the revelry to fall away, for the dapperness to be a final, ironic stand, hoping against impossible odds. I think of the women I have sometimes had to say no to, and a girl I long to be with, and I think to myself, God, it's a mess. It really sucks to say no, and dating is such a drag and a crapshoot. So being older, I kinda give up on the whole thing. I don't even hope for serendipity any more, I figure these things take time, and I have to be in the moment and not care about the search for romance. So, navigating around rather than towards. It's a bit monastic but I find that I manage.

I would say that the essence of growing old for me is to think wider, to see farther, in the sense of appreciating the wider world, and it's precious oddities and persons marvellous, beyond the narrower ken of my own imagination, and yet at the same time, not abjuring the weight of the inner man, of fire, dash and vigor. To live by the soul. I have often thought about these four things Nietzsche wrote about. His prophet Zarathustra gave this advice in the context of sleeping well, but of course I take him as meaning how one should live so as to live contentedly. There's something so true about this writing - to overcome thyself, to reconcile with thyself, to find truth, and to laugh. Who shouldn't sleep well, by this prescription? And I think that growing older has made sleep, regular, early sleep, quintessential and precious. I am glad for it, to wake up early, to exercise, to eat early, and to have a long, full day in the sun, until one tires out in the evening, old and with cheer.

Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.

Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.

Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.

Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.

CCXXXI - to live is to get older

In earlier times, there was a Borders bookstore at Wheelock Place. It's funny, I write about past things now the way that people from earlier times write about past places. You can hear about such places, and see the odd photographs, but the connection with the physical reality they once inhabited is totally gone. What it meant to be there, what it was like, how it was lived in, the familiarity and the feel, all gone. The past entails an older place, once younger, and an older cast of principals, once youthful, existing concurrently, both now forever changed. We are talking about things that were once "the present", with all the fullness and immediacy and realness that "the present" is to us, us who live in the right-now of the present. Isn't it such an odd feeling to consider "the present"? to know that the present, however total and encompassing it is right now, with all its weightiness, significance and severity, will never be much more than it is as the present? The eternity of the present! And yet, as it does, time rolls unceasingly on, fore-running its ever-marching peoples. Tiong Bahru (塚 bahru), Badok, the Padang, Jurong East, Marina Bay, Fort Canning, Pulau Belakang Mati (Sentosa) ... virtually all the old places one thinks of, of which now only abridged histories and sepia photos on plaques, slightly forlorn, carry a reminder, the metamorphosing inhabitants of which no longer have the memory or language to reminisce, to provide substantial, deeply-rooted discourses of lives and lived-in-ness. We have so little "historied-ness" in us, nor the sense that any of that matters, until it becomes our turn to comprise old news, old history. I don't know, I love the sense of being connected with a place, of sharing deeply personal, even ancestral ties to the land. To know the lie of the land. To recall in the mind's eye vistas, scenes, scapes, the chiaro of the hazy sunshine, and the oscuro of the sleepy, staid earth. Megarry and Wade were right, land, real property, is fundamentally a special thing, not what some call a bundle of rights.

Well, there used to be a Borders bookstore at Wheelock Place. I would have gone there in my school days, with not much money to buy a book. Buying actual books was never in question for me, as a child of the nineties. Well, Borders was expensive, compared to Times (not to mention, Popular). In the psychology section was a book by Sigmund Freud, the Interpretation of Dreams. This was a virtually irresistible title. Well, I eventually bought it. To some dismay, it turned out to be very difficult reading. Between reading this, and Mein Kampf, I gained the impression that Germans are not fun to read. Of course, there were other Germans, up to even Schopenhauer, or Schopi, as I call him in my mind, whom you might say was intellectually exciting, but not necessarily fun, even then, to read. But for the record, neither Hitler nor Freud is fun to read, and one of the things they share in terms of literary presentation is that they are both fond of very, very long sentences, some of which are unbearable. Anyway, Freud was in the field of psychology, naturally, and psychology is inherently a difficult field of science to grasp, not to mention that the subject of dreaming is even more so, even more illusory, chimerical. I didn't finish the book. I did get that Freud understood the dreams of his patients as being wish-fulfillments, coupling anxieties, and sensory inputs received over the course of one or two days. He posited some concepts as being symbolic, such as representing carnal desire, but those analyses might have escaped me. At any event, the book sits in a box somewhere, unexhibited. I am not sure that I will ever desire to thumb through it again.

They say that dreaming is not special to humans. They say that the platypus experiences up to nine hours of rapid eye movement type sleep a day (night, rather), which may or may not be a lot for the platypus, but that he does it the most. Perhaps he does it when the nights are longer, in winter. After all, doesn't the polar bear hibernate? Well, I often have a dream of running away. It's unpleasant, because I am not, in my dream, terrifically good at running. I manage obstacles, that is true, but I do not manage them well. I don't think the simulation includes getting caught, or perhaps I exclude it. Perhaps I manage the mounting anxiety by shifting the narrative to something else, subconsciously. That is one theme that recurs. For my own reasons, I think I have seen through this dream. Another one that recurs, with some emptiness at awakening, is of having a loved girl close by. It's not a longing per se, but a kind of wistfulness. I could go on, but the man I was at twenty, twenty-four, isn't the man I am now, at thirty-two, and no amount of gentle recollection changes that. Which is not to say that I am proud of the man I am now, but perhaps I am a little prouder. I think that this vein of dreaming, over the years, acknowledges that. This dreaming wells together now a feeling more of serenity and conviction than of desire and pining. Little calming gestures, placid comforting, resting a head together, on a shoulder, or feeling for, holding hands under a blanket, bring courage and a little joy. The rising day feels like it lacks a little something, upon waking, but not something that upon contemplation will never be found again. So I take (if unfairly) what Eliot wrote, in his Little Gidding,

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time. 

CCXXX - Et Noluistis

Evangelium secundum Lucam

13:34 Ierusalem, Ierusalem, quae occidis prophetas et lapidas eos, qui missi sunt ad te, quotiens volui congregare filios tuos, quemadmodum avis nidum suum sub pinnis, et noluistis.

13:35 Ecce relinquitur vobis domus vestra. Dico autem vobis: Non videbitis me, donec veniat cum dicetis: “Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini”.

CCXXIX - Thermae Antoninianae, or the Terme di Caracalla

Latin! So divinely pristine.

Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra;
sed vitam faciunt balnea, vina, Venus.

Baths, wine, the desire of women corrupt bodies of ours;
but vital-life is made of baths, wine, the desire of women.

- epitaph of Senator Tiberius Claudius Sacerdos Julianus, 2nd century AD.

CCXXVIII - Skydog

Excerpts (including interviews from the book, One Way Out, by Alan Paul):

Butch Trucks (groove drummer): One day we were jamming on a shuffle going nowhere so I started pulling back and Duane whipped around, looked me in the eyes, and played this lick way up the neck like a challenge. My first reaction was to back up, but he kept doing it, which had everyone looking at me like the whole flaccid nature of this jam was my fault. The third time I got really angry and started pounding the drums like I was hitting him upside the head and the jam took off and I forgot about being self-conscious and started playing music, and he smiled at me, as if to say, "Now that's more like it."

It was like he reached inside me and flipped a switch and I've never been insecure about my drumming again. It was an absolute epiphany; it hit me like a ton of bricks. I swear if that moment had not happened I would probably have spent the past thirty years as a teacher. Duane was capable of reaching inside people and pulling out the best. He made us all realise that music will never be great if everyone doesn't give it all they have, and we all took on that attitude: Why bother to play if you're not going all in?

Reese Wynans (keyboard player): Dickey [Betts] was the hottest guitar player in the area, the guy that everyone looked up to and wanted to emulate. Then Duane came and started sitting in with us and he was more mature and more fully formed, with total confidence, an incredible tone and that unearthly slide playing. But he and Dickey complemented each other - they didn't try to outgun one another - and the chemistry was obvious right away. It was just amazing that the two best lead guitarists around were teaming up. They were both willing to take chances rather than returning to parts they knew they could nail, and everything they tried worked.

Jai "Jaimoe" Johanny Johanson (fill drummer): Duane talked about a lot of guitar players and when I heard some of them I said, "That dude can't tote your guitar case," and he was surprised. He loved jamming with everyone.

Thom Doucette (harmonica player): None of them could hold Duane's case except Betts.

Gregg Allman (lead singer, keyboard player): I walked into rehearsal on March 26, 1969, and they played me the track they had worked up to Muddy Waters' "Trouble No More" and it blew me away. It was so intense.

I got my brother aside and said, "I don't know if I can cut this. I don't know if I can cut this. I don't know if I'm good enough." And he starts in on me: "You little punk, I told these people all about you and you don't come in here and let me down." Then I snatched the words out of his hand and said, "Count it off, let's do it." And with that, I did my damnedest. I'd never heard or sung this song before, but by God I did it. I shut my eyes and sang, and at the end of that there was just a long silence. At that moment we knew what we had. Duane kinda pissed me off and embarrassed me into singing my guts out. He knew which buttons to push.

Joseph "Red Dog" Campbell (roadie): He was my hero. I mean. I would have followed Duane to the end of the earth. I was older than him, but I respected him enough and loved him enough to do it. Duane had a sixth sense - or a seventh sense, man. He just knew what to do at the right time. There’s a fork in the road, right? If you go to the left, there’s a pot of gold. If you go to the right, you’re in a pile of crap. Duane could walk right up to the fork without thinking and say "Let’s go to the left." And he’d come out smelling like a rose.

But he was fair. He was honest. He was up front and didn’t beat around the bush. You didn’t have to hear “Well, you know ... I was thinkin’ ... It ain’t really nice for me to say it, but ...” You didn’t have to hear it. He’d just say, “Red Dog, you messed up bad man. We’re gonna have to let you go.” There wouldn’t be no beatin' around the bush. I try to live like that myself. I just don’t have the tactfulness or the position in life to deal the other way. So I just hit it, bam-bam-bam.

I don’t really think you can put it into words, on Duane. He used to say, “You guys do all the work. We just come over and have fun.” That’s really what it’s all about. If these musicians say “I’m out here working my butt off, something’s wrong.” I mean, if he ain’t out there playing and having fun, something’s wrong. It’s at the stage of the game now where it’s not work. It’s “Hey, let’s enjoy ourselves and play.” The roadie’s the guy who’s doing the work to get the thing going.

Jaimoe: One morning, Duane came over and knocked and he was bouncing off the wall - full of energy, as he always was, but more so. He said, "What's up, my little chocolate drop?" He often called me that.

I said, "Nothing. Just waiting around until it's time to practice." And he said, "You want one of these?" He had a little container of something that I thought were blackberries, which were a kind of speed we took with some regularity. I said I was all right and he laughed and said, "Okay," and dashed off on his bike.

I went over to the pad to use the commode and sitting on the back of it was a little bottle of those pills - anytime someone got a little something they stored it there so that if the police came it could be flushed away. I looked at them and thought, "This is what Duane had. The way he was bouncing around, I'm gonna give it a try," and I popped three of them. God damn! They were psilocybin tablets and they slowly came on. They were real natural and earthy and pleasant, but I should not have taken three.

We got something to eat at Mama Louise's and went to practice like we did every day, but rehearsal was a waste. It had to be canceled because we had all taken some of those things. Butch couldn't play the drums because he said they were flying away. Gregory wasn't really into psychedelics so maybe he didn't take any, but the rest of us were flying, so we just called off practice and the day finally came to what it should have been, hanging out. There's been a lot of stories told about how we had this incredible jam, but we couldn't even play.

Gregg: I had mainly played rhythm guitar. That was my instrument, but the Allman Brothers had too many guitars, so they blindfolded me, took me in this room, sat me down, took the blindfold off and there sat a brand-new, 1969 B-3 Hammond and a 122-RV Leslie, with a few joints on it, and they said, "OK, we'll see you in a few days! Good luck! We'll bring you food and check back with you now and then. Learn how to play this thing."

That's only a slight exaggeration. The truth is, my brother knew I really, deep down, always wanted a Hammond. I always admired them when I saw them with blues bands and whatnot. But then I stayed up day and night, hour after hour, learning how to really play it.

Dickey Betts (lead guitar): Duane and Gregg had a real "purist" blues things together, but Oakley and I in our band would take a standard blues and re-arrange it. We were really trying to push the envelope. We loved the blues, but we wanted to play in a rock style, like what Cream and Hendrix were doing. Jefferson Airplane was also a big influence on us; Phil Lesh and Jack Casady were Oakley's favourite bassists. We liked to take some of that experimental stuff and put a harder melodic edge to it.

Duane was smart enough to see what ingredients were missing from both of our previous bands. We didn't have enough of the true, purist blues, and he didn't have enough of the avant-garde, psychedelic approach to the blues. So he tried to put the two sounds together, and that was the first step in finding the sound of the Allman Brothers Band. When the two things collided, by the grace of God it was something special. You can't say someone conceived of it all. It just happened and we all played a big part.

Steve Morse (guitar player, Dixie Dregs): [It's] a Les Paul Custom with tiger stripes and a sunburst paint job. It doesn’t have a pickguard, and the neck looks like a regular Les Paul neck, a sort of dark brown. It was cracked once, but Twiggs [Lyndon, road manager] had it fixed when we were in California. And it’s got regular humbucking-looking pickups, but the one in the lead position is so intense! It’s so powerful. Something is so right about it. That’s the main thing about the guitar. I think the reason Duane had that guitar is because it would scream so much on the lead pickup. I remember Twiggs saying that Duane used that guitar on Layla and a lot of the Fillmore East. He liked to use it for songs where he’d switch from playing regular fingerstyle to slide. I’ve used the guitar for solos on every album, just about. You can hear it on the melody of ‘Cruise Control,’ the slide guitar parts in ‘Rock and Roll Park,’ and in ‘Twiggs Approved’ there are two short guitar solos – one is in a regular style and the other is slide, and both of those are on the Les Paul.

That guitar of Twiggs’ has gone through a long journey. Twiggs traded a car to Gregg Allman to obtain the guitar. Twiggs had a lot of old-time cars, in really good shape, and it was one of those. It wasn’t like Gregg was just giving the guitar away. He knew that Twiggs would really take care of it. At a time when Twiggs was really broke, someone offered him $15,000 for the guitar, and he wouldn’t take it. Twiggs all along was planning on giving it to Duane’s little daughter when she turned 18, so the family is holding the guitar until then. The reason Twiggs was gonna wait until then is he didn’t think that the girl would realize what she had. And Twiggs was just that kind of person – the principle of the whole thing was more important than anything.

Derek Trucks (guitar player, nephew of Butch Trucks): The sound is so distinct and powerful. There was definitely some extra spirit in the room. At one point, Butch looked down, saw I was playing Duane’s goldtop and was really struck.

Butch: It was during ‘Dreams,’ And seeing and hearing Derek play the solo on the guitar Duane used was very emotional.