Driving home today, thinking about a long time ago and the various selves I have shed along the way, I spent some time thinking about one particular self I once draped over me like a blanket: the folksinger. I had no authentic identity to speak of back then, but folksinger was a good approximation, and I was Chris the musician back in Buffalo, at least as much as I was Chris the anti-war activist and Chris the philogynist.
I gave up that identity when I moved out here in 1982, though: Elissa had brisk and unkind words for me whenever I’d play or sing, and a few weeks of that was sufficient to get me to stop altogether. I never picked it all the way back up again after she left: there are enough people in my life who groan audibly when a guitar-playing singer is not Richard Thompson that I’d pretty much rather indulge in recreational dermabrasion than play at parties anymore.
Becky’s not among those people, nor am I, but between the lack of strict deadlines involved in desultory, private playing and my distractability, I go months sometimes without picking up the guitar. It’s been a year or more. The calluses are gone from my left hand.
But I resolved tonight on the way home to pull the guitar out of its case, and I did. The rabbit watched me. The guitar wasn’t too far out of tune, surprisingly. The sixth string was a note and a half low, but everything else was within a quarter tone. It took maybe a minute to get it right, and much of that was time spent figuring out there was a flat pick wedged between the strings. The harmonics in line, I strummed a soft A minor.
There was an abrupt, solid thump, and the sound of nails on hardwood as Thistle dove beneath the couch. He stomped the floor down under there a couple times for good measure.
Everybody’s a critic.
