Yet my ears have been tweaked because of music. My son introduced me to the guitar some 3 or 4 years ago and I've been playing close to three years now. I'm not good or what I would consider good. Mind you this is my standard and not only have a heard a unison of eye rolls at the moment I am going to offer some ground to say I'm not one to see myself in a favorable light. So I'm not as good as I think I can be, but I see enough potential to keep chasing it.
Well, despite how I see myself I see music as one of the last challenges I'm willing to partake that actually makes me want to push myself through. Much like martial arts or the sciences, I find a joy that most people would get while playing games that are not meant to coddle you. It's a challenge and much after so much work I see the improvements enough to keep on while the challenge continual. It's a beautiful struggle that I am more then happy to partake.
But, Kieth Richards, right? Well, ever since taking up guitar I've been changing my sense of music. and what I consider good and fun. It's kind of sadistic trying to play a song you like. Knowing you're going to take something magnificently perfect and even attached to memories that I'm going to guess have meaning to you and tear that song apart. Analyze and break down every bit of the song to realize what progresses it, what makes it magnificent and what makes you undertake the task of attempting to replay a piece with your own hands only to see it mauled by clumsy fingers and frustrated hope.
I've gained a love for punk songs and their simplicity of two or even three chords with enough speed to make it sound chaotic and rhythmic. How rock songs pull from blues and how blues pull from the pain in your soul only to make you wallow in it. How some artists make a simplistic motion complicated and how a simply song can have depth. It's all so addictive and even challenging.
So when Richards shared the story of his grandfather and the guitar that sat upon the mantle and how if he was able to touch it he'd finally be able to play it. How the drive for something forbidden and even mysterious caused him to reach and touch and even dream. How once in his hands his grandfather simply taught him one piece of music, just a sliver really only to cause him to train his fingers and drive his new fostered thirst for more. That song is the Malaguna (still wondering how many different ways to write it or are they different songs) and it's divine.
So starting up learning power chords, full chords and straining with C's, F's, and B's I've was creating something that sounded like noise from beaten birds. Talented fingers trained to puncture, grip, and stab now are being trained to dance on strings of metal in grace and beauty. Something I'm not used to. I can say I'm in now way beautiful, but playing this piece makes me feel joy and grace. Things I've never had much of. Even my martial arts experience is brutal, effective and blunt.
Yet I feel.....free? Happy? Meditative? It's a piece that has driven me to actually do something I am not used to doing or saying, "Let me see if I can try it." I honestly say that I'm not one to try something because fear of instilled failure that I still now wrestle with. Even though I am able to correct and be corrected in science and math, creatively I've been if not stunted, but maimed. There was a memory of who I was that was killed off to nothing. It's hard to explain, but when you see someone attempt something and you see then on the verge of mastering it or even understanding it and you come at that point of time and tell that person that their attempts are stupid, worthless, and not even needed you kill that. Despite if they were inclined to it or bad at it, it dies. It's why I'm so guarded and even more abrasive when someone wishes to correct anyone in that manner near me.
I play in almost secret. I play with trust that people who hear me will not throw stones and/or bitterness. I play and even become entranced. I strive and attempt to make things better without fear of ridicule, but drive to see if I can. I can say now I regret not having this. Even believing that I would never have been good. I don't think I'll ever make a record, go on tour, or even play in public for tips, but it makes me happy. Few things do that these days. It almost completes me. It offers me hope and grace.
How much of change?
I've grown the fingernails of my right hand long enough to pick strings now. I've painted them black so that I can stop focusing on their unsightly appearance and even painted the rest to not seem odd. I carry picks with me and my guitar at times to play in certain places where even in public I can find some amount of solace while fighting my paranoia of someone running up and telling me I suck. I like this and I regret not having it younger. If I had this younger I think I would have never learned to fight......an odd thought, but I can dream.
So this piece is.....gorgeous. It's delicate and precise. Not thrashing, but it stands alone. I can play this to show mastery, potential and even advancement. Mind you it's not like playing Where is my mind where as you're the only one who knows how good it is without accompaniment. It stands alone. It sounds magnificent without someone filling in the holes where you leave. You can play this anywhere and have people go wow. And it's hard. It's patterns, rhythms, and flare. It's fancy, almost even pretty in the way people put lace on things.
It's not me, basically. And watching people see me slaughter it or what I think slaughtering is almost make people go, "damn, it's almost there. I wish I can hear this better." Now they can hear it as "hey, I know what that is and that's not bad."
I know it's stupid, but I just paid myself a compliments. Feel so dirty.
Yet, it's so much fun to do. It's hard but in a month of playing it I have more of the parts set and just need to order it and add polish. I've improved now to the point I can finger-pick it all. With a pick I'm graceful. Without it I'm a bit wobbly with less wobble as I get better. I might even play it one day. For people. And not fear of....well......jackals.
So now I pull out Hope, a $50 guitar with plastic frets and heavy strings and punish my fingers until I can not feel them or when they start to bleed. I work my hands as I would have punching stone or wood. I practice and I offer myself some motivation and kindness while they strings cut in and create deeper calluses that will remain with me. I pound at it with Hope until she sings. Until I can make her hard cheap body sound gorgeous, even with stray hums of and clanks. That's when I pull my son's guitar, a $150 wood body with lighter strings and see if I can make it sing it's aria.
One day, I'll get something worth to play. something around $2000 and gloriously magnificent. until then I visit guitar stores, tune them to key and then see how my fingers can make such a work of art sing with rosewood, maple, and mahogany. I borrow and play and yearn. One day, I'll make something beautiful. I'll show others what I think I can create and make them see me not as a thing or monster.
So yea.......it's even making me look at Donovan's Atlantis and Classical Gas. Maybe I can train my fingers to be delicate, graceful and pretty. And then be thrashing, vicious, and blurring when I get into metal. Or insightful and longing when hitting the blues.
huh....imagine that. My hands learning to create beauty after decades of destroying and dominating.
This will be good for me.
yay me.
yay.
Thanks, Keith Richards. Thank you very much.
