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Strings AttachedJanuary 20, 2006 Guitar class starts Monday. Earlier this week I stopped by Island Music and bought a few flat picks and two sets of the strings recommended by the teacher. Tonight, after several days of buck-me-up self-galvanizing pep talk, I restrung and tuned my borrowed guitar. It took almost two hours, but hot damn I really did it. I'm feeling so smug you'd almost think I knew how to play the thing. Then I remember that when I saw James Keelaghan at Club Passim in October 2004, he broke a string during "Hold Your Ground" and managed to replace it and keep singing at the same time. (Actually he broke two strings: while he replaced the first one, fiddler Oliver Schroer played his own "A Million Stars," as a result of which I tracked down and bought the CD of which it's the title track. Pretty good sales technique if you ask me.) Before I intimidate myself completely, I remind myself that he's a consummate pro, and that I can replace verbs while telling a story and most of the time make Microsoft Word do what I want it to. I grew up in a family where it was dangerous not to either have the right answer or be able to BS convincingly. Took me years to connect this to my pattern of choking whenever I was on the verge of getting good at something, and my reluctance to risk trying anything new. At the same time my subconscious kept leading, coaxing, or throwing me into situations for which I was, at best, half prepared. Usually I managed to rise to the occasion and hold my own. Writing's what I do best, but I don't have to do everything that well. Whew. My favorite high school history teacher told us about some study that suggested that most people's outlook was pretty much fixed by the time they were 23. I'm sure of that part: by age 23 they had stopped growing. She offered Winston Churchill as someone who'd managed to avoid getting stuck in the outlook of his young-manhood. He did more than take in new information: he let his outlook evolve in response to that information. (I almost used the word "mind-set," but his mind wasn't set; that's the point, it remained flexible.) I remember recoiling from the notion of getting stuck but not having any idea how to avoid it. On the whole I think I've managed, or my higher self has managed it for me, by tossing me into sink-or-swim rapids where familiar techniques weren't enough to deal. Hey, if I can manage to restring a guitar, for sure I can learn to play it -- not as well as Keelaghan or Patty Larkin or Richard Thompson, but maybe well enough to play some of their songs?
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