Carrying on with my life as it passed in stages, blooming from that young child with my
fist balled into an imaginary microphone, into a young teenager entering high school,
hardly making anything of it. It wasn’t brought to the surface again until I fell a helpless
victim to a terribly cliche standard at the rocky age of 15. I was at the peak! The last
step before entering this new world of young womanhood that separated me from
childish associations as I stood 6 feet tall, and towered over boys my age with my wiry
looming presence. When I got my hands on my first guitar, a Simon and Patrick
acoustic that glowed with a soft burgundy sunset red, I felt the entire world fall back into
my callused fingers. Strumming crappy tunes that put me beyond the living room and
onto the stage of imagination, and when I was officially signed up for lessons, it was
destined to be the year I would fall back in love with music, or more or less a boy.
There’s undoubtedly something electric and mystifying about people who create
music. It speaks a strange exotic language of truth, and if you listen close enough you
might be lucky enough to get a little of it. From the beginning of our lessons he told me
straight up from the start that he couldn’t tell me everything I needed to know, but just
enough to get me back on the hook and a foot in the door to something new. Something
had to give, for all of this was way too marvelous to be true! My heart crashed when I
finally let myself open my eyes and realize he was way ahead of my time. With a leather
jacket, black skinny jeans, and a love for his guitar to which nothing else could compete
(not to say that I didn’t try!). The saga of me and the rock and roll Elvis man to be came
to a halting stop.
Bob Dylan once said, “Be groovy or leave, man”, so I don’t intend this to begin
with solemn sappy heartbreak, and leave the tambourine man’s motivation hanging high
and dry. Pity lingers on at the worst of times to say, but in the end it probably led back to
my fascination (or obsession) with the long haired rebellious rockers, and the image of
spiritual freedom I long to achieve. Whether it be the boy with the magical guitar, and
his soft spoken words of “rocker wisdom”, something inside me clicked on again.
Whatever it was, it led me to realize that music had always been there as a lingering
first love, desperate for my tender eye, or in this case my tender ear.
Rock and roll was revived and took me away in it’s lucid dreams and twanging of
shiny guitars. It’s only natural to say a thousand times yes that I want to be in on the