My Guitar, But Our Music

Published in The Christian Science Monitor

             My shining, beautiful, thirty-year-old, valuable, mellifluous Gibson Hummingbird guitar seldom comes out of its case these days, and that is a shame and a violation of my own principles, though this state of affairs won't last, I hope and vow.

            I do have the tape I recorded, a few months ago, playing the guitar and singing, mostly my own songs, that I had meant to record, oh these long years, but didn't get to until recently, fortunately perhaps, though what I heard when I played it back was not unexpected.

            I don't sing that well. The feeling, the enthusiasm is there, but my voice isn't fully under control. Neither, for that matter, is the guitar. Close, at time, with both, especially when I've practiced a song many times, and when I'm not trying to project my voice to an imagined audience of hundreds.

            I bought the guitar about twenty years ago, for so low a price that I won't name it, for fear you'll accuse me of stealing it. I had been playing a twelve dollar Sears guitar, and I was not dissatisfied, but when the Gibson came to me through an estate sale, I willingly passed my first guitar along to a friend who needed something to begin with.

            During some difficult financial times, some years ago, I decided to pawn the guitar, the only thing of much value that we owned. A five-mile walk turned up what I thought was an extraordinary chain of events.

            Two pawnshops, which would ordinarily have been open that day, were closed, no explanation given. The proprietor of the next shop offered an absurdly low price. The money would not have met our needs. The next would have given me my price, but the owner had just taken in so many goods that he hadn't the cash, and he had no one to watch the store while he went to the bank. If I could come back after the weekend, he said, he would have the money.

            By then, I had decided the message was quite clear. I wasn't to let go of the instrument, even temporarily. There must be another way to meet our financial emergency. And there was.

            Several times since then, I have been tempted to sell the guitar to ease our financial situation, but each time, my family has made it clear that it's my guitar, but it's our music. Money is only money and would soon disappear, but the guitar and its music will not leave us.

            Early on, I made myself a deal. I had no intention of aiming for any kind of career in music. I would make music for the fun I could have with it and for the enjoyment a few others might find in it, though I would be careful to always allow any listeners room and freedom to move off if what I was doing did not suit their tastes.

            I had the idea that music of the people, for the people, from the people, was dying out. People, I thought, who played instruments aimed for professional status, and if it became apparent they weren't going to achieve it, they gave up. People getting together for music plugged in the record player much more than they dusted off the piano and opened instrument cases. Even home audiences expected performers to be polished, or they would edge them aside in favor of the electrical outlet.

            But that isn't how I approached it. My listening to radio music or records always has been very limited. It isn't according to my tastes to be a consumer, though I willingly listen to live performers. Most of all, I want to participate.

            There have always been times when the guitar stayed in the case for weeks at a time. The work I do for a living has always had very busy times. Firewood-cutting season is short in country where firewood is essential. Ranch work has hay-cutting season, when the work goes from dawn until dark. Girl Scout camps have summer camp, when a site manager is on the move to keep all the facilities operating. This site manager also tries to keep several essays and several short stories progressing.

            One of our daughters plays piano and the other plays violin, so there is still live music to keep the cobwebs from our ears.

   Steadily through the years, there have come those times when I do have some time, and I open the battered black case and tune the guitar and see what I can remember and if there's anything new I can work up.

            My audience is small. Myself, my wife and daughters. My daughters' musical tastes have developed. There isn't much contemporary vocal music they will listen to. No rock and roll at all. Some country and western, but it has to have content. Doc Watson. Flatt and Scruggs. And me. They listen to me. Not that my music is all country and western, but a lot of it has that flavor.

            From when they were very small, they have always been a rapt audience. Since we have always lived in cold country, often in houses that aren't very well insulated, and most of my time for making music is in winter evenings, they have also usually been a wrapped audience. Ideally, they hear me from their beds as they settle for the night.

            Their repertoire on their own instruments is expanding. It is founded mostly on classical music, but lately I have heard the piano speaking of Susannah, who was coming down the hill. I have heard the voilin reminding us that this land belongs to you and me. I know those songs. My daughters are away at "Horsewoman-ship" camp, but when they come back, we are going to find the time to begin to blend our music, two instruments, then three. My wife, Laura, sings well, so we will also include her voice.

            Sometime, perhaps this winter, we will make a tape. If my guitar playing and my voice is the least professional of all the music I hear when we play it back, still I will not have fallen short of what we were aiming for, because the sharing, the working together to create music that transcends any of our individual efforts, the joy of the process itself, is what I have always been reaching for.