Gooey Bass Fingers

Taking a break from wailing on my bass. My fingers feel like goo. I’m so out of shape from holding onto a steering wheel for a living for eight years that it’s disheartening. I have songs that I’ve written that I literally can’t play anymore. At least not to completion. Hell, I have trouble with the rhythms in some of those songs. Little quirks of timing that I have a hard time nailing now.
The obvious solution is to work at it. Put aside a little time every day and just go at it. I’ve been doing that, and I can tell that I’m loosening up a bit. But my stamina is gone. That’s going to take a lot longer to get back than just getting limbered up. That doesn’t bode well for recording. I suppose if I have to, I could record the difficult songs in sections. That’s the way things are recorded in most professional studios, anyway. Dub, dub, dub, and dub some more. But I’ve never liked recording that way. I want each instrument part to be a performance. The last few fading notes are part of the same performance as the first few. I think that helps keep a song in a groove. Or helps create a groove. Putting things together like a jigsaw puzzle takes all the life out of music. Music is suppose to breathe and ebb and flow. It’s supposed to be a moment that’s been captured. A snapshot of emotion and rhythm. It’s not data that’s being assembled into a whole.
I’ll get my chops back. I’m sure of it. Hell, I could widen a few eyes now. But it’s frustrating to realize how much I’ve atrophied. It’s like waking up from a coma after eight years and realizing that you’re not going to just spring out of bed. I guess that would be even worse if you were a professional athlete before the coma. I was very good in my day. I’m shocked to look back and realize just how good I was, and at what level I was playing. Now I’m sitting here, and I’m wondering how much of my limitations have to do with disuse and how much of it has to do with age? How many years do I have left in me before the fingers just can’t do it anymore? That’s assuming I can even get that level of performance back. How long before the aches in my shoulders and knees and neck are in my fingers? That’s been in the back of my mind for awhile. Whether I realized it or not, I’ve been working on a new technique that’s a lot less stressful on my fingers and takes a hell of a lot less energy to pull off. But I want that to be an addition to the arsenal, not a replacement for the things I just can’t play anymore.
Okay. I’m babbling. My fingers are almost fingers again. Goo be gone! Now. Do I get to tinkering on the work I’d intended to do today, or do I go back to torturing my fingers? Should I take it personally (and would you consider me mad if I feel like …) my Alembic is smirking at me?