My calluses are gone. The strings gouge deep into my fingers. Has it been that long? I bought new strings when Becky last strung her fiddle, and that couldn’t have been longer ago than… my god. That was in February. It’s been more than half a year since I touched my guitar.
That’s not the longest I’ve gone without playing. There was a four or five year period in my twenties. I got tired of listening to my then-girlfriend make fun of my playing, not that she was completely unjustified in doing so. I wasn’t bad, but I was very earnest. Oh well. I started again within a month of the breakup.
Five years it may not have been, but seven months is long enough. Boy, does this hurt. I get the capo, anxious to cheat a little against the strings. It helps, a little.
What’s gotten into me? How can I have more important things to do than this? I have a back porch in California with a screen door that slams, and every twenty-four hours or so another cool night comes, and I use one in 200 to play guitar? The nineteen-year-old me would be disgusted. He played every night outside in the Buffalo winter, uphill both ways. A regular untalented male version of Ani DiFranco, he was.
Cassiopeia peeks out from behind a cloud.
My voice wavers in the upper registers. My neighbors are asleep. I’m trying to be quiet. If I could sing a bit louder, I could nail that pesky E two octaves above middle C. But I can’t, and this limits my playlist. The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty is about right, and I get most of the way through before I must drum my lacerated fingers on the concrete to numb them. They only let me play so long out of kindness, I suppose.
I have an audience. Thistle’s on the other side of the screen door. Is he listening, or does he just want out so he can play with the raccoons? The moon blazes through the live oak canopy, and I play Across the Great Divide. My voice has warmed up a bit; if I point my face at Cassiopeia I can hit the higher notes just fine. Telluride comes unbidden to the strings, and I play along. Likewise with Rock Salt and Nails. Angel From Montgomery. Just like old times.
Becky murmurs something nice through the screen door. Only a few minutes of playing, and my fingers start to remember what they’re supposed to do, hitting the runs of grace notes from G to C to F, A minor and Bb.
I need to get my priorities straight. I’ve spent a quarter century, more or less, pulling music from this thing: it’s an investment I need to manage. I realize that for the last few minutes I’ve been trying to fingerpick Hard Times Come Again No More, a new song for me. I guess my hands have the right idea. Work on enough new material to keep things interesting.
I launch an encore of Telluride at Cepheus’ wife, then go inside to mine. The guitar goes back into the closet. See you tomorrow night, old friend.
