(no subject)
The Man in Black was back again this week - my marvelous Marv, with the breathmints tin of guitar picks, his diluted blue eyes the only hint of color on his entire body. This week he was wearing a sharp black leather jacket, which astounded me because "sweatbox" is the first word that comes to mind whenever I walk into the cramped instruction room. I leave every week with wet palms and pit stains - I can only compare the 30 minute lessons to playing guitar in a toaster oven set on high. With an audience of one sitting a foot away from your face.
Seven years ago, inspired by my high school obsession with Joni Mitchell, I decided I would teach myself to play guitar. I unearthed my mom's old acoustic from the basement, awkwardly figured out how to put new strings on it, tuned it to the Crosby, Stills and Nash song "Teach Your Children," and used mom's yellowed "Modern Hits!" fake book (circa 1970) to learn A, C, E, G and D. I made up my own finger-placement for more difficult chords like F and B7 and was soon faking my way through Joni's "Urge for Going," "Circle Game," "Carey," and "California." Intimidated by picks, I strummed with my thumb and developed a lazy, half-assed form of finger picking. In all that time, I never played for anyone but myself.
So last night, when Marv set my Joni Mitchell songbook on a music stand, opened it to my first learn-to-play-the-right-way lesson (Free Man in Paris," per my choosing), handed me a pick and asked me to start playing, I absolutely froze. "Do I have to sing it, too?" I asked. "Well, yeah, that's kind of the point here," he said, tapping a pencil on his knee as a makeshift metronome. "Ready? One, two, three..."
And it was awful. Absolutely awful. This is the girl who had never played guitar for anyone but herself, who fakes chords and learned to strum with her thumb so parents and roomates wouldn't hear her beyond her bedroom door. This is the girl who has no problem singing the national anthem at a Pistons game, but falls to pieces if asked to perform in front of any audience with less than a dozen people. This is the girl who at that very moment, was sweating so badly that she could barely press the strings, much less hold a pick between her fingers.
Somehow I survived. Barely. "Not bad," Marv said, thankfully stopping me halfway through what was quickly becoming the most torturous two minutes of my life. "Now here's what you can start working on." And he showed me what to practice, and how to hold the pick, and how to make a "real" F chord which, as much as I hate to admit it, sounds so much better than the version I've been faking for seven years. And we played it through a couple more times together, and each time it got easier, and we ended up laughing at the end. "See? I'm just here to take the fear out of it," Marv said. "Once you get over that, you'll be great."
Yeah, well, only time will tell.
In other news, I'm going kitten-shopping tomorrow. No name ideas yet, I figure I'll wait to meet the creature first. And I'm thinking of getting a screen-printed shirt to play off all those Urban Outfitters "Everyone Loves A (Fill-in-blank with ethnicity here)" t-shirts. You know, the ones like "Everyone Loves An Irish Girl" and "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl." I want mine to have a picture of a glucose meter, or maybe a little vial of insulin, and say "Everyone Loves A Diabetic."
Hey, why not?
Seven years ago, inspired by my high school obsession with Joni Mitchell, I decided I would teach myself to play guitar. I unearthed my mom's old acoustic from the basement, awkwardly figured out how to put new strings on it, tuned it to the Crosby, Stills and Nash song "Teach Your Children," and used mom's yellowed "Modern Hits!" fake book (circa 1970) to learn A, C, E, G and D. I made up my own finger-placement for more difficult chords like F and B7 and was soon faking my way through Joni's "Urge for Going," "Circle Game," "Carey," and "California." Intimidated by picks, I strummed with my thumb and developed a lazy, half-assed form of finger picking. In all that time, I never played for anyone but myself.
So last night, when Marv set my Joni Mitchell songbook on a music stand, opened it to my first learn-to-play-the-right-way lesson (Free Man in Paris," per my choosing), handed me a pick and asked me to start playing, I absolutely froze. "Do I have to sing it, too?" I asked. "Well, yeah, that's kind of the point here," he said, tapping a pencil on his knee as a makeshift metronome. "Ready? One, two, three..."
And it was awful. Absolutely awful. This is the girl who had never played guitar for anyone but herself, who fakes chords and learned to strum with her thumb so parents and roomates wouldn't hear her beyond her bedroom door. This is the girl who has no problem singing the national anthem at a Pistons game, but falls to pieces if asked to perform in front of any audience with less than a dozen people. This is the girl who at that very moment, was sweating so badly that she could barely press the strings, much less hold a pick between her fingers.
Somehow I survived. Barely. "Not bad," Marv said, thankfully stopping me halfway through what was quickly becoming the most torturous two minutes of my life. "Now here's what you can start working on." And he showed me what to practice, and how to hold the pick, and how to make a "real" F chord which, as much as I hate to admit it, sounds so much better than the version I've been faking for seven years. And we played it through a couple more times together, and each time it got easier, and we ended up laughing at the end. "See? I'm just here to take the fear out of it," Marv said. "Once you get over that, you'll be great."
Yeah, well, only time will tell.
In other news, I'm going kitten-shopping tomorrow. No name ideas yet, I figure I'll wait to meet the creature first. And I'm thinking of getting a screen-printed shirt to play off all those Urban Outfitters "Everyone Loves A (Fill-in-blank with ethnicity here)" t-shirts. You know, the ones like "Everyone Loves An Irish Girl" and "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl." I want mine to have a picture of a glucose meter, or maybe a little vial of insulin, and say "Everyone Loves A Diabetic."
Hey, why not?