Guitartalk

I feel kind of like a dick for not teaching myself guitar early.

Today I started practicing some chords and basic chord progressions (Cmaj, Dmin, Gmaj, Cmaj) and of course it's a bit hard at first, but I feel like I am learning it faster than I thought. I've had a guitar since 2001 and granted it wasn't the best guitar, but it was sufficient to learn on.

I got it because at the time all my best friends were in bands and doing cool guitar solos in my face. And in retrospect, it brings me back to a point I realized a few months ago when I decided to make music my "thing." While great art will always be great art, it's only as good as long as you're looking at it. Of course great art can inspire and move people but, it's not as, I guess you can say, engrossing as music is. No one thinks of the gallery they saw last week while doing dishes. No one makes love staring at the Sistine Chapel on their ceiling. No one exercises to this week's comic books. And by no means am I down playing art. It's still very important to me but the point I want to make is, that I've come to realize I want something more interactive. Something more involving and something can permeate into every aspect of life.

The reason I thought guitar playing was so cool was because it was an audio and visual representation of skill. Not only that, it was a outlet for style and personality. How you played, what you look like when you played and what you played said so much about the guitarist. At one point or another, we dream about become rockstars but we never really break down why it's such an attractive dream. Great guitar playing is not just a measure of skill. It's an indication of personality.

I've never really thought about the guitar for the last 6 years because I never really thought of who I want to be. I don't want to be the next great guitar player. I don't want to be voted the coolest looking guitar player. I just want to say "I play guitar." The statement alone says a lot. It's not an easy instrument and in itself there's so many styles to play. Any one style can say volumes about you. But like a simple statement, visual art itself is taken at face value (in some way). You see someone's art and that says so much about them. It doesn't reveal the whole story about the person. There's no liner notes to it. You can't see how it was made or what it really says.

But watching someone play guitar... THAT'S the whole story.