I wrote this one a while ago when I was still doing that myspace thing. I'm not sure why I'm rehashing it. It could be because there are an increasing number of kids carrying guitars in the halls where I teach (which I am told is my fault). Or it could be that I recently broke a string. I don't know I guess I'll figure it out later.
It's about 1:15 in the morning. I just came home from an open mike in a place called Kili on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn. I've been drinking. I think that my performance was on fire! But, as I mentioned earlier, I've been drinking. Now anyone knows that when you've been drinking (or other fun "ing" words) your view on life can sometimes become very clear. My friend Mikel likes to call these moments "moments of clarity"; like when you wake up and discover that the job you've had for years really does suck and you wasted 20 years. It's kind of like that. I had a few of those moments tonight. However; they may or may not be considered as tragic as the one I just mentioned in the example. This of course would depend on the reader's choice of "ing" activities prior to reading this.
Moment 1: While in the bar, I had a conversation with my friend Sharrief about how I named both of my guitars after my deceased grandmothers. Their names are Lilly after my paternal grandmother Lillian Downing and Mattie after my maternal grandmother Mattie Ruth Patterson. I was not hit with this moment of clarity until I took the stage and started to play. Somehow during a spell of egotism as my surface self was sensing the admiration of the crowd and thinking "damn I'm kickin' ass up here", my insecure self was reflecting on a conversation that I once had with a producer regarding my playing. He told me that he loved my songs but when I played them he could sense that I had not yet gotten to know my instrument. He felt that my songs would be more felt if I developed more of an intimacy with it. I remember thinking that what he was saying sounded a lot like masturbation. Fast forwarding to tonight, the moment of clarity came when I realized that he was right...that is about the guitar part but I digress. Although there is a chance that he could have just been planting a self fullfilling prophecy in my brain, it didn't make the moment any less powerful or any less prophetic. So I guess (he says reluctantly)he deserves my thanks.
Moment 2: This is the part where the "ing" thing counts. After my performance I also realized that I often feel these voids of intimacy when playing the very guitars that bare my grandmother's names. And then I realized that just like I don't know my guitars I never really knew my grandmothers either. I loved them both, but I never got to know them them as people. Anyone who sees this connection might also see the tragedy here.
Moment 3: In the cab ride home I started thinking that maybe there was some kind of deep revelation that I was stumbling upon. Maybe this connection with my guitars meant that I had to start calling my parents, aunts and uncles and getting information on my grandmothers so that some black history month movie of the week moment would happen and the spirits of those great women would jump into my guitars with each bit of knowledge and turn me into a supernatural Robert Johnson type dude. But then the moment of clarity came when reality yanked me out of the daze, shook its head at me and said "nope dat ain't it". I realized at that moment that if any of those women were alive today they would tell me that the only way I'm going to get to know my guitar is by picking it up every day and playing it.
I guess maybe I did know those ladies after all.
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