Influence confluence
The guy to whom I gave my guitar has some kind of degree in musical composition. He has agreed to teach me and Jackson some of what he knows on the subject. And in return, we are going to teach him some of our fingerstyle guitar techniques (now that he has a classical guitar).

It's certainly good to absorb as much knowledge as possible, as long as you're ready for that knowledge. The songs Jackson and I write certainly don't coincide with what one would learn in a composition course. But that's not a bad thing, and neither of us thinks it is. But we both are interested in learning some compositional theory. This could be dangerous. The songs we write are a fragile balance of styles. It seems to me that this equilibrium could easily break.

This is the nature of influence. When knowledge becomes intuitive, there's just no way around being influenced by it. Even if you make a conscious decision to disregard the knowledge, you are still being influenced by it; sort of like "reverse psychology". I see no way around this, other than complete and utter control of your mind. An ability I certainly don't have.

I'm still going to learn about composition though. Hopefully it will either influence me to the good (complimenting my style rather than changing it); or it will have the same effect that learning about Catholicism and Mormonism has had on me (having a positive intellectual effect, but being laughable as a doctrine).

Well, how was that for an unorganized, badly composed weblog entry?