The Lesson

The Lesson
July 2001

Plink, plink, plink, plunk, plunk, plunk, buzzzplink, buzzzplick, plick, plick... my first guitar lesson produced an appreciation of muscle wisdom and very little recognizable melody but it was a start.

I've been starting and then stopping this learn-the-guitar journey ever since I was about eight. My father played guitar and drums professionally all my life and didn't quit the "biz" till about ten years before he died at 84. I tried and failed at all my attempts to handle his heavy "f-hole" Gibson. Though the wire strings cut into my straining fingers I liked the feeling of making my hands stronger and building calluses. I'd recover from an hour or so of trying to play more than two chords and intend to do it again tomorrow. But I didn't have the discipline or the drive to create many tomorrows in a row.

My dad was a self-taught musician. A guy breaking out of the do-anything-to-survive mode during the Great Depression. He hated the mind numbing brick laying and ditch digging CCC programs of the 30's. He wanted adventure and romance. He wanted to do it his way. That much he passed on to me. He went out and bought a second hand guitar, tied a rope on it for a strap and set to work learning to play it. It was a labor of determination for him. It was the magic carpet for his dream.

But for me learning the guitar seemed like my brickwork so I never stuck with it but I deeply admired and sort of envied those who did. Music filled every cranny of my being but my only expression of it was singing, to myself of course, introverted Midwesterner Lutherans don't do much public performance. It would bewell, too out-there.

I got into listening to records and attending performances. Music was a spectator sport for me and my determination, another gift from my father, took me on other voyages.

Funny thing, I almost always had a guitar around somewhere. I didn't hang on to them though. I had two or three over the years that would haunt me from their cases in the cobwebbed corners of my life and when I would finally get to a place of; "I'm never going to do this and I don't want to feel guilty about it anymore!" I'd dust them off and give them away to those who seemed more inspired. Once in awhile I'd actually take one out and do my usual four bars of "Lover", and then lose it all when I couldn't find another chord to finish the song. Then I'd just turn on the stereo and listen to Barney Kessel or Wes Montgomery and assure myself that it was impossible anyway.

Some years I promised my family, as a way of coercing myself into action, that by Christmas I'd play some carols for them on the guitar. I'd even fanaticize about actually doing it.

Never happened.

Last Christmas Elizabeth bought me six weeks worth of guitar lessons.

It wasn't what I wanted. The Pimentel guitar I bought from a friend who suffered from the same syndrome had been sitting in its case, virtually untouched for about fifteen years. I didn't even take it out to search for the lost chord in "Lover". I was on the verge of putting an ad in the paper when suddenly last Christmas showed up and I was going to have to DO something with it.

February came..and went. Then March and April. The guitar teacher called in May and asked when I was going to come in for the six lessons. I told him I'd call him in June.

June came. I didn't call.

He did. "OK" I said; "might as well do this thing."

"OK. When?"

Damn, I was actually going to have to do "this thing"!

"Monday?"

"OK. What time?"

Persistent little devil, "Three?"

"That's good. See you then."

I had two weeks to find ways out of it. But finally I decided the way out was the way through. I'd just do it and get it over with. Yesterday was my first lesson.

"Did you have fun?" Elizabeth asked.

Her ideas of fun differ from mine on occasion. This was one of those occasions.

"Oh it was alright."

"Well, how did you do?"

"I just sort of plinked along with the page."

"Are you going back?"

"Well, I'm obligated to six lessons."

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

Sure right. "Yes I do."

"No, you can quit if you want."

And let all these ghosts down? "Nah. I'll just run the course and see how it goes."

I'm leaving all doors open this time.even the one that's labeled; "Carols by Christmas!".

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