Music

Every Friday, as I've mentioned before, Hidden Shores has a session called "picking and grinning," where musicians from the park gather to do an open microphone-style jam.  I have participated, mostly at the urging of Buster and a few others, but it's pretty clear that I don't belong in the broader sense of the word.  First, there's the issue of "performance."  I play guitar for any number of reasons, but I am not a performer. 

I remember, way back, when I had first met Lora.  She lived off-base, downtown in Kunsan in a small upstairs apartment.  That apartment is etched vividly in my mind, perhaps because the most significant turning point in my life occurred there.  I was spending more time there than my own room, and I do remember especially sitting in her papa-san chair, waiting for her to come home, playing the guitar.  Even then it must have been clear that I had no interest in replicating the pop-playlist.  There had been a brief foray into classical music, enough that I learned some of the techniques of classical playing, but ultimately classical music required an even more precise replication.  In both cases I lost interest quickly in building a repertoire of the replicated, though I didn't lose interest in the guitar.  My guitars at home didn't fit within my luggage for deployment to Korea, so I had bought one there.  Very cheap, horrible tone, but it did play in tune, and I was playing that guitar when Lora returned to her apartment and caught me playing the guitar.

I am almost always embarrassed when people catch me playing the guitar, almost as though I had been caught doing that thing everyone does in the utmost privacy, but that no one admits.  She must have sensed my embarrassment, or something, because she asked me asked a question to which I responded, "playing is a way of letting the universe pass through me."  OK, first of all, I know how new-age pretentious that sounds, and it wasn't then and isn't now the sort of thing one says to impress Lora.  Still and all, though, it was an honest response.  I knew then vaguely of John Fahey and that other John, John Renbourn, but so-called "fingerstyle" guitar wasn't really a "thing" unto itself, at least not in my limited musical universe.  I listened mostly to singer-songwriter types, and Dylan figured prominently in that bunch, but I wasn't really interested in replicating Dylan, either in the Dylan-ness of Dylan or in becoming a "troubadour" singer songwriter like him.  I really was more interested in my "thing," which for the longest time I thought was relatively unique.

Let me explain.  I am almost always embarrassed when people catch me playing the guitar, in part because almost everyone asks "do you know ..." and then they'd mention a particular song.  My answer was almost always "no," with a hidden "yes."  I didn't know the particular song, but I also knew that, given ten minutes, I could get the chord progression down, and ten minutes more, I could add some nuance.  At the pickin' and grinning, for example,' I can follow most of the playing after the first verse and chorus.  There are a few "modal" songs, those written outside of major scales, that present a challenge, and are more interesting, but even those I can usually follow given the song's chart.  I didn't need to "know" the song, because, in a sense, I "already" knew it.  Then too, there's the matter of singing.  Unless one is in a crowded Irish bar or a church, singing is a way of drawing attention to one's self, a more adult version of the four-year old's "mommy!  daddy! look at me."  The open mic format of the 'picking' and grinnin' reinforces this inceptual narcissism.  With children, we can fawn with complete adoration over the most mundane achievements, but with adults, only in the rarest instances is the "look at me!" merited, particularly in this age of digital reproduction, when the "original" is everywhere and nowhere as a point of comparison.  Then too again, there's the matter of the lyrics, without which the song would not be a song.   Although sometimes catchy, rarely are they really worth memorizing.

Besides, "letting the universe pass through me" is a form of prayer, and prayer should be a "private" matter, along with other things.  I'm not one for quoting the Bible, but as Matthew 6:6 points out, "when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."   The current infestation of political Bible thumpers have, perhaps, over-looked this verse, but be that as it may, it strikes me that the first requirement of "letting the universe pass through me" is the "letting." Though it's easier in private -- singing in the shower, so to speak -- it's not just a matter of letting go of one's fears and inhibitions -- any half-way decent performer is capable of letting go of stage fright and doing whatever it is they do without inhibition.  It is rather a letting go of the "self" itself, which is, by definition, not an exhibition of the self.  It seems rather lame to say "I lose myself in my playing," but then most authentic religious expression end up being rather lame in comparison to the experience itself.  Suffice it to say, to use another lame expression, "my playing is best when I'm just playing."  Then too, there's the matter of "just playing," which implies that I am not running my mouth, expressing myself, or "feeling" another's expression as my own.  If there's no self to worry over, then there's no self to express first hand or second hand.  Then too again, there's the matter of "the universe."  I could have said "let God pass through me," but I didn't, partly because we have so thoroughly succeeded in trivializing our whole understanding of God into a disco-ball reflection of our own inadequacies and prejudices.  If God is God, then there is nothing I need express to God that God doesn't already know.  The language that most defines us as human gets in the way and throws up border walls that keeps God from passing through me.

I am aware of the ironies of writing a self-reflective (and a bit sanctimonious) blog about letting go of the self.  Lately, I've also been castigating myself for not being a better guitarist in the conventional sense.  I've learned some instrumental versions of recognizable songs and committed them to memory.  Although they're "jam killers," as Bob of brief acquaintance put it, I've played them at the pickin' and grinnin' (nervously) and received some compliments because they provide some relief from the amplified and pitchy boom-chuck versions of country songs.   Yesterday, at the last pickin' and grinnin' I intentionally made a spectacle of myself.  The first couple of go-rounds for the open mic, I passed and didn't play, but reserved a spot "next to last."  I had spent about a week learning "Amazing Grace," a simple version that let the melody ring out clearly.  I had played around with Tommy Emmanuel's version of the song, but his is a virtuoso's show piece, and even when he performs it, the most beautiful aspect of the song is obscured, that reaching, aching melody.  The song is so familiar that one can't help hearing the lyrics, but the song also is so beautiful in its simplicity that it transcends anything resembling dogma and opens a path for the divine.  Still, it was a hymn, and I  didn't want it to be a "jam killer," but I wanted to play it, and I wanted to dedicate it to the victims and families of those killed in our latest mass shooting, our latest school massacre.  So, when it came round to my turn,  I did just that.