Two Guitars


I have two guitars in front of me, side by side. One is a Larrivee D05e, which is like a Mercedes. She's high quality from the tuners to the ebony fretboard to the beauty and complexity of her voice. The other is a Seagull artist studio burst. She looks smaller but is also a dreadnought, so she's very close to the same size. it's how she dresses that makes the difference. I keep picking up one for a little while and then the other, to compare how they feel.

I've gotten into the habit of apologizing for how poorly I play the guitar, but that's getting boorish. God used music as a handy tool to beat my ego into submission. As Linda said, when I began to realize how hard it was going to be to learn this in my fifties, "You're just used to things being easy for you. This isn't."

It sure as hell isn't. And I think to myself, "What possessed me to start this? Was it as simple as my masseuse, Rosalie, proclaimed? "Being a writer and a bodyworker isn't enough for you? You want to be a rock god now? Some men wanted to be doctors and lawyers, and some wanted to be outlaws or just get rich, but you? You wanted to be a pussy magnet."

Rosalie has a way of making people cringe sometimes because she doesn't censor herself, and once she hits a vein she really mines that sucker, getting progressively more tickled with herself, until she forgets what she's doing and goes into a trigger point too hard and fast. "Owww! That hurts."

"It's karma, Dan. How many times have you made people yell?" And she continues to amuse herself at my expense. "I've been around musicians since I was a teenager," she said, "and these guys are so good you can't even imagine it; I mean, they learned how to play when they were babies, Dan, and they practice every day. That's all they do."

And was Bianca completely fair when she rolled her brown eyes and turned her high cheekbones to the sunlight slanting through the wooden blinds, speaking with a northern Italian accent, "You cannot sing, Dan. I'm sorry, but someone needs to tell you this." (Where the hell does the question mark go in that sentence anyway?)

Or course they were being fair. I had no idea how to sing and I drove people crazy sitting and beating on open chords over and over again, belting out simple country songs, such as, "Crazy Arms," "Satin Sheets," and, "Ride Me Down Easy." But I was stuck with it because I had decided I was going to learn the guitar. I had started by writing some songs, and how hard could it be to learn how to play and sing them?

Writing is as easy for me as talking, or maybe easier than talking. It was certainly easier than singing. I had no idea that it wasn't just a matter of putting my mind to it. In writing I don't think much about whether what's being done inside matches what's coming through my finger tips. It's all one thing.

Playing an instrument involves creating new neural pathways. My pathways were specialized for moving information between my head and my hands, whether it was writing or doing hypnosis or touching somebody. I was involved in communicating. I thought of the human body as an instrument, and one I had learned to play expertly.

So why was it so hard to move that sense of touch to a musical instrument? The obvious reason was that I had no knowledge of music other than listening to it. I knew nothing of music theory, not even the simplest thing, such as the circle of fifths I needed to just play simple songs. But the larger problem was the one Linda pinpointed: I was used to learning new things quickly and being good at them, if I really focused my attention.

So I thought I could shortcut the foundational work of establishing the new neural pathways. I thought my ability to write would just transfer over to songwriting, and that everything else was secondary. And now I am sitting here trying to learn augmented and diminished chords, and the patterns up and down the neck. I can play now, move smoothly between chords, and know which are in the key. But it's like I'm in grade school. I still have a long way to go. I have to remind myself that at least I'm not in kindergarten anymore.

Still, if there was any ego left in this, I wouldn't do it. I'd do something I'm good at. The reason I do it is that I am beginning to see how important it is to begin to learn something new at the approach of old age. When I look back at how much new construction I've done, as far as creating new pathways, I begin to get a glimpse of the bigger mind behind my small and self-important one.

And I begin to have deeper understanding of some of the lyrics I wrote for the first venture into songwriting, "Stray Shot." For example:

"From my mountaintop in robes of white
I gaze into the Persian night,
I'm watching for assassins close at hand.
I sent them out when I was younger
to bring me back a mind that's stronger
than the old age piling up white sand.
Each comes home and he kills his master; he takes his place and time moves faster,
than the right wrong old judge understands."

Whoever I was when I began making the album, I'm not that man anymore. It was a ritual, marking the beginning of something and the end of something. I was following a dream, and in the dream, there was a black man. The shadow always appears as a black man. For a black man the shadow is a blacker man. In the dream I was sitting on a small bridge over a stream, and I had a guitar. He said, "You don't know how to play that guitar." And I knew that he could play it. When I thought about it, I knew he was shadow because I didn't recognize him as myself. I understand why he thought I was so funny, sitting there, an aging white man, trying to figure out that guitar.

Except now there are two guitars, and I can play either one.

Posted: Wed - July 23, 2008 at 05:40 PM