Songs and Ideas
By
Douglas Whitney Fielder

I have been writing songs since I first learned to play guitar at 14!

To tell you that they were "good" songs would certainly be overstating my talent at both playing and writing!
I persevered and over time I got better by playing covers of other artists material, learning both style and mindset while doing so. Somewhere around 20 I started to develop my own style, I start to understand that the best songs came from deep inside, realities within my own experience.
Since that time I have focused on that and along the way have found some true gems, some from my own experiences, some from experiences I witnessed and had some interaction with, some simply "made-up" from something outside of my personal experience. At 25, I married and though my partner in that 30 year experience was accepting of my music, she was not encouraging of it. It was not, in her opinion, a way to make the kind of money needed to raise our family (eventually two children). I did continue to play, even wrote songs for the children and played for them from time to time. My son eventually wanted a guitar in high school, but it was a passing fancy and last we spoke he had not developed into a "player". I consider myself a "player", though self taught and far from proficient at guitar, I can strum/fingerpick a tune, I can imitate music that I hear and like, I can write simple songs and have been told that I have some skill at garnering audience attention on stage.

So here I am in my 70's, retired from working finally, though working around the house is not for sissies! Allowed my time to do as I please by my current "life" partner, I use the term "life" because I purely expect to spend the rest of my life with Pam. Arthritis has constrained my ability to play both Bass and Guitar, but I am fighting back and winning currently. Once upon a time, I was playing around with acronyms trying to find something I could use for a domain name and I remembered an old saying that really applied to both who I am and what I believe, A Square Peg In A Round Hole. ASPIARH, I pronounce it like the word Aspire, it is both what I am and what I "Aspire" to be. Simply stated I believe in everyone's right to "Fit In" we are all so different and yet at the heart of it, the same. I saw a video on Barn Building recently where a craftsman making windows had created a metal template with a number of round holes getting progressively smaller across the length. In order to create a piece of doweling for a window frame, he would take a square length of wood and drive it through one hole after another until he got to the size he wanted. Now he could have used a wood lathe to turn round pegs, but his template was simple and fast, it also was something that could have been created and used prior to lathes or machine lathes.

So that is the crux of who I am, a Square Peg always looking for the Round Hole in any situation, always looking for a way to "Fit In". Often it is not easy and because I have developed a fairly intense sense of doubt, I am very difficult to convince if someone does not have their own "Fixed" idea of what they are talking about and proof enough to convince me. I don't believe in everything I read, especially on the internet! Even scientific proofs have been later dismissed due to people like me who refused to accept the idea if it did not make sense. I will pursue information until I am convinced that it "could be true" and then look for proof that it is, scientific or otherwise.

This site is purely self indulgent, a way for me to put my songs and thoughts on the internet for posterity.
I want to be able to bring up an idea or song from anywhere via my IPhone and discuss it with my piers and friends.
As I have grown older I have started forgetting so much, fortunately I was vain enough to write much of it down along the way!
That is what you will find here!