Tenacity

I wish I could tell a story of a great musician who wows the audiences and brings them to their feet. This is instead the story of an unrequited love for my guitar, and of finding my true passion too late.

I fight with the discipline and madness required to sit in a chair, repeating the same movements for hours of practice each day. I struggle with the final effects of a performance that is truly not good enough, and never measures up to my expectations. I swim in the raw nakedness I feel playing in front of others, as if the palette of my blood, sweat, and tears was there for everybody to witness. Many times I ask myself “why bother,” and I would rather sink my hands into the soil and tickle the worms, roly polies, earwigs, nematodes, and friendly bugs in there, instead of demanding that my fingers perfect the impossible. A classical guitar belongs in the Museum of Torture: a merciless instrument that enslave many.

Other days, that one note out of a hundred undisciplined notes comes out of my guitar just oh so sweetly, and it makes all the difference. I become addicted to it, a servant to a tyrant master imposing tenacity and sacrifice; and I bend my everything to it.