Guitars

I need my guitars. I love them. I think they love me. But just like my hundreds of books that I have not read but still need, i don't always need to play my guitars. They are a part of me but more as an instrument of creativity than an instrument of music. The have also become an important part of my identity. I'm not quite sure who I would be without them.

The first guitar I had was when I was 12 or thirteen maybe. I can't remember the circumstance but I remember being in downtown St.Cloud for many evenings as a young awkward lad. For some reason I had time to myself and would run through the stores. My favorite stores was a jewelry store that also specialized in rare coins. I was a coin collector. My mom was a waitress at the time and so every night after she came home I would dig through her tips and pull out the wheat pennies and silver and plop them into my little blue cardboard collector books. There were rarities and ones I just wouldn't probably come by and so I'd go to the coin store to see them and dream about scraping together the thirty buck or so it might cost to fill the empty space in my book.

The other stop I'd make was the music store. I'd go and just look at the guitars and dream about having one. I set my sites on one I thought might be in the range of a Christmas present and hoped....and dragged my mom in one night to make sure she knew what I wanted and where to get it. As is the case with her she caved and I got the gift early. It was a terrible guitar, the action was high even in the open positions and it made it tough to form chords without all sorts of unwanted accompaniment. But still it was mine. I loved the fact that i had a guitar, not so much that I could play it as much as I had it. It was mine, and it meant that there was potential of something. A basis of hope.

I didn't play that guitar much, I tried and did learn all the basic chords and could move between them albeit clumsily. I still remember screaming out Sister Golden Hair at the top of my lungs. The only way i could sing. It was horrendous, even I knew that but I still could do that and it meant something.

In fifth grade I had moved from rural North Dakota to a suburb of St. Cloud. It was a bit of a dramatic shift as I left fourth grade still a little kid and entered 5th grade a preteen, the land of sneakers, big combs and feathered hair. No segue. I was unprepared and so went from being very popular to a bit of an ill fitting outcast. That year we had our testing for band, the only band instruments I had an interest in was the drums. The problem with them is that because every boy wanted to play them and the limited equipment you had to test above a certain point to be qualified. Only myself and another kid qualified. i felt really good. Here was a chance to fit in.

The only real problem was that there was a higher cost of equipment. We were quite poor at the time and so I let it drop, even I knew there were more important things. And so when the chance to get a guitar came along I jumped on it. It was more validating for me than anything. I could be in music too, on my own terms. Even better than band.

Like a lot of things in my life it was always more important that I could do them than it was that i actually did do them. So I never really put in the time to learn the guitar. Everybody was better than me. It really wasn't until my early twenties that I started putting the time in on guitar. At the time I was playing bass guitar a bunch, daily for hours and so would use the guitar as a related distraction. Gradually I became more proficient, but still until the last few years I played guitar like a bass player. I now feel more comfy with my acoustic in my hands than a bass.

A true musician has to let the music out. For me it was never about the music, it was about the creative process. The process was always more important to me than the result. Thus I've partially written hundreds of songs and finished maybe a handful. For that reason I've never really seen myself as a musician. i get just as much satisfaction out of well timed one liner zinger as i do out of a finished set of lyrics and chord progressions.

But I do need my guitar. From that first moment that I got one it's been a huge part of my self identity. If I was ever without one I would not be complete, there would be a great emptiness.