This is a picture of Clare's head. I got Clare at a not-to-be-named chain music store right by Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts about a month ago. She is the first guitar I've ever owned that I feel like I have a real relationship with. I've been playing guitar off and on since I was 12, and I've always known that I will never be famous musician. This fact used to bother me to the point that I quit playing entirely for years solely because I knew I would never be the next ground-breaking guitarist, touring the world with my band, being chased everywhere I went by adoring fans and doing interviews with Rolling Stone about my troubled personal life. You know, the whole rock star thing. And because of this, I would critique every single note I ever played to the point that I stopped seeing why I picked up the guitar in the first place, all those years ago. I just didn't see the point in putting effort into something that wouldn't ever get me anywhere.
About six years ago or so, which happened to be about four years after I broke my back, I bought a guitar again. For those four years since I had broken my back, I had been searching for something to make me complete again. A friend of mine at the time had an old acoustic guitar that he played a fair amount, and it sparked the need in me to create music again. I ended up with a thin bodied acoustic electric that seemed to suit my style and musical influences at the time. After I started playing again, I immediately began to have dreams of getting a band together and becoming some kind of musical, I don't know, guru or something? Anyway, I threw myself back into music with pipe dreams of fame, or at least recognition, and played loud and hard and fast for a few months, the whole time telling myself that this guitar was going to fill the piece of the puzzle I had lost when I stopped being able to walk. The music had nothing to do with music and everything to do with making me whole again, in my eyes and everyone else's. Needless to say, that didn't last, and I put away that guitar for a couple of years while I searched for the miracle cure that I knew was right around the corner and would fix all of these demons and dark feelings that had taken up residence in my heart.
A few years ago, while I was moving into a new house, I pulled my guitar out and started to play a little. Not too much, just when the mood struck me. I even took a couple of lessons from a friend of mine who is a guitar god, and learned some basic scales and such. But I never took it seriously. It was a hobby, a thing to do when I had a few extra minutes. A year later, I was still at it, playing some riffs I made up when I felt like it, learning some songs to cover when I was at a party and people were passing around a guitar (amongst other things) to whoever felt like entertaining he group. And I had discovered something: I had finally figured out how to enjoy playing guitar purely for the act of making music and let go of all of the childish dreams that were holding me back from making the music that's been rattling around my brain all these years. I also discovered that if you're halfway decent at it, you can add some joy to someone else's life as well. And that always feels good.
This story/lesson can be applied to every facet of your life. If you stop trying to force the square peg into the round hole and just relax a little bit, you'll be amazed at how much further you can go, no matter which direction you're headed.
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