Girl, I Want to Be with You All of the Time--All Day and All of the Night

Okay, ladies, time for me to fess up as to what I've been doing this past month. I say "ladies" because I seem to have a predominantly female readership--a fact that, to quote Martin Short's character in The Big Picture, "gives me a yuge amount of satisfaction." So--well, I'll get right to the point (how uncharacteristic of me!) Imagine a man making the shape of an hourglass with his fingers and saying, without any hint of remorse, "I've been spending a lot of time with one of these." The fact is, see, I'm in love, and in this particular instance I'm not talking about my wife.

But it's okay: Deidre knows all about this. In fact, she's the one who led me right into this love affair, and she takes great pleasure in seeing me with this new girl in my arms.

She's pretty easy to hold, this new girl, seeing as she is smaller than my four-year-old and quite a bit lighter--about five pounds. She's less than a year old, I'd guess, though I don't know for sure: I've only had her since December, and we've really only begun getting acquainted in the past couple of months.

B. B. King calls his special girl Lucille, but I'm no B. B. King, and this girl of mine doesn't have a name other than the one stamped on her head: Yamaha. She's classical, quite literally, though I have no intention of learning classical guitar. I just like her wide neck, which readily accommodates my thick fingers.

* * *

All my life I've loved music, loved to sing, and--as I've come to discover my inner ham--loved to perform. I always wanted to learn guitar, but as everyone who's ever tried to pick up that instrument knows, there are massive barriers to entry. Principal among these are the six strings themselves, which, in order to produce something approximating music, must be pressed firmly in very specific ways, some of which involve hand contortions seemingly so impossible they would have gotten a person condemned for witchcraft in old Salem.

And the pain in the fingertips! There's a reason why guitarists lovingly call the strings "cheese slicers." A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally bumped the tender fingertips of my left hand into a doorframe, an act that produced a sensation akin to severe electric shock. Uttering a few time-honored expletives, I doubled over in agony, and yet there was something satisfying in that pain, because it told me that I was truly paying my dues.

If you were to compare the fingertips of my right hand to those of my left, you would find on the one hand (literally) a set of four perfectly normal prints, whereas each fingertip on the left hand now bears a semi-permanent indentation about a quarter of an inch in length, the surfaces growing rougher and more calloused with each day.

Given the fact that I've only been taking lessons since the beginning of February, I'm sure you're wondering how well I could possibly be playing. And that goes double when I admit that I remained rather perfunctory about the whole thing, far from enamored, until just three weeks ago. On the day after Deidre's big book launch here in our hometown (April 7), we had a pre-Easter family gathering at our house, and that afternoon her sister (and Knight Agency superstar) Pamela asked me if I knew any songs beyond the handful I'd learned to that point. Her request for "Me and My Bobby McGee" led me to start searching for chord charts, and I soon began printing out information on literally hundreds of songs. Thus began an explosion of enthusiasm, a learning process that has seen me devoting countless hours to compositions by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello.

* * *

Thank God for the age in which we live, when a guitar initiate has at his access conveniences unknown to the great minstrels of the past. I count among these not only digital tuners (thirty-five years ago, when my guitar teacher was learning, everyone had to tune by ear) and web sites such as AZChords, which offers (free of charge) information on songs by thousands upon thousands of artists. That has given me the opportunity to pursue a wildly eclectic song list that suits my personality.

I find that I generally go for two types of songs. First there are the moody, painful ones such as "Bobby McGee" (which I can now practically perform in my sleep), the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers," or Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'." Contrasted with these are a variety of upbeat or hard-rocking tunes, usually presented in a slowed-down (because I can't play fast), ironic tone: "Viva Las Vegas," for instance, or a number of Sex Pistols tracks. I also love the kinds of songs, such as Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thang," that no one would ever expect to hear on an acoustic guitar. Recently my seven-year-old asked me to learn "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer, which I think would be a nice addition to my repertoire. Oh, and I do a killer bluegrass/mariachi version of KISS's "Rock and Roll All Nite."

But just how well does the kid play? Well, Jimmy Page doesn't have anything to fear. I don't aspire to play at the level of my teacher, or even of some of his middle-school students, who already have lightning-fast hands that run all over the frets and the strings. (And by the way, as hard as the job of the left hand is, the right hand is still more difficult: that's the one that strums or plucks, producing distinctive rhythms and sounds.)

But I've been blessed with a good singing voice, and all I ever set out to do was to accompany myself while singing. For that task--the style of Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, or Elvis Costello as opposed to that of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Eddie Van Halen--I'm plenty adequate. Getting better every day, too, as is almost inevitable when you practice constantly and even do fingertip pushups so as to increase hand strength--though mastery of the basic but physically challenging F chord still eludes me. Soon this pursuit is going to kick into a new level as I begin performing for people other than my wife and daughters, starting next Thursday, when I'll be doing a few songs for my younger daughter's preschool class.

* * *

Learning the guitar has proven to be one of those great before-and-after experiences. It has literally changed just about everything about how I see life and conduct myself, a fact nowhere more evident than in my profession.

Charlton Heston once said that he loved to draw because he did it only for fun, and that whereas he would evaluate his own dramatic performances with the utmost of rigor, he could find complete satisfaction in producing a drawing that looked remotely like the thing it was supposed to represent. Substitute writing for acting, and guitar for drawing, and you have my situation. This new pursuit, which I undertook simply because I was interested and not because I ever hope to make a dime doing it, has in turn revolutionized my work as a writer, a craft I have pursued with varying degrees of commitment for more than thirty years now.

Oh, yeah, that's another thing that's kept me busy: thanks to this artistic renascence engendered by the guitar, I've begun writing again. And I mean seriously writing, crafting the book I've been trying to write for years and years and years--in fact, for most of my life. Perhaps my experience can help another frustrated writer out there: if you suspect that your well has run dry, perhaps you can prime it by pursuing something entirely different, something in which there is no pressure and little expectation. That's what happened to me, and it's made all the difference.