double_neck raze "did you buy this out in kingsville?" he asked me. "from a guy named dean? i had a guitar like this once. i did a trade with him. i was kind of bummed to let it go." he thought it could have been the same axe he said goodbye to thirteen or fourteen years ago. i wasn't sure of the name. i don't think i ever knew it. my right ear was fucked up from what i did to it with a cotton swab that day. half my hearing was gone until sleep gave me back what i'd lost. we listened to aretha's "soul '69" in the car. i gave my money to a middle-aged man with a warm smile and brought home a prop with eighteen strings. all it ever did was lean against a wall upstairs gathering dust. i stuck it in two strange tunings that completed each other and wrote half a song around some call-and-response open strums, but nothing really came of it. one day i looked at the guitar and thought, that's money just sitting there. and we could use the paper more than the wood. so i tuned it to standard and dadgad, and today i sold it to a man named bazz who teaches out in tecumseh and plays in a band i'll never hear. some buried bit of clutter in my brain wanted to tell me it came with a soft case. i couldn't find it anywhere. and anyone who shows up an hour late and talks you down to fifty bucks less than your asking price doesn't deserve a case. he pulled into the driveway on a motorcycle with a face that matched the leather on his shoulders. he left me with a little less than half of what we agreed to as a deposit, and came back just before dinner with the rest of what was owed and a vehicle better equipped to transport what he decided wasn't his old friend come back to haunt him after all. and i called it good enough. 220915 what's it to you? who go blather from