this looks very much like the one that sits in my folks' house, which i grew up playing & will have in my home again someday whenever i settle down "for good"... it's never let me down! i let myself down when interacting w/it, like during the 11 yrs i didn't really play & would try when tanked & loaded up & just humiliate myself & embarrass ppl around me, or when i don't sit & play it enough these days... our folks, dr spock-era parents, never made us do anything we didn't want to. but mama made me practice piano. "you could pick out melodies when you were 5 years old," she told me. "we could tell you had a talent for it & it seemed wrong to let that go to waste." before i fell into bad habits, i got pretty good cause once i got past the whining, frustrating stage, something went click & i could hardly satisfy my desire to play. hours each day. hours!! i love my famly, who never went crazy as i, ocd-like, played some pieces five, ten, fifteen, 100 times -- ad nauseum! (this may've in part driven my sister out of the house, tho, into the arms of her punk-rock crew of happy teenaged misfits). :)i couldn't play a note w/o music until after about age 35, but once i got brave & tried, the ear i had as a kindergartner started coming back poco a poco & now i get to be at the joyous place where i so love picking songs out & riding those black & white rails sans manuscript... the process feels like god sometimes, i say: it feels like love & joy & excitement & lust & peace & catharsis (what soul in love w/music has not laughed or cried while playing??) & so much good...
my friend, my dear, dear friend, altho you'll never know it, i love you so & am so thankful to our folks for forcing me to practice when i hated it, cause from that has come companionship & connection w/magic.
1 comment:
Beautiful! And familiar!
I spent my 1st 11 or so years trying to find the right instrument. I tried many...so close and yet so far. Playing prewritten music always bugged me. Then one day, while home sick (again) I was watching a Zorro movie and dug out Dad's old Silvertone nylon string gee-tar. To play like the Mexican guys in that movie...and more..was all I wanted. We had a housekeeper (honest to God, her name was Hazel! lol) who was a bit of an old redneck woman. She snatched the out of tune gee-tar outta my hands, tuned it up and showed me 3 chords (G7 C7 & D7) and told me "There! Now you can play some Hank Williams!" It started a many years-long run of never putting the guitar down! I found some old "Learn To Play Folk Guitar" books and taught myself a few new chords (including the dreaded-to-me-then G chord!) and some basic songs. I kept playing. And playing. I started to pick up riffs. Power chords soon followed. The Beatles. Hendrix. BLUES! BB King. Albert King. Albert Collins. These demon from hell (who many years later befriended me) Link Wray! Punk Rock! By 13 I was playing bar gigs & house parties. Then I joined a band playing this "rockabilly" stuff that sounded an awful lot like what I used to hear on WWVA late on Sunday nights.
Once, at a funeral, an auntie asked my dad why I never remarried. His answer, "Because he's still with his 1st, true love". My auntie questioned him about this and dad just smiled and played air guitar and everyone knew.
Once again, you and I travel the same, familiar path. May you wake with the smile that only an artist, writer or musician can ever truly know. :-)
ML2U!!!!!!!!!
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