My old friend...

I picked up my guitar last night for the first time in awhile and I started going through riffs and scales warming my hands up. Since I was diagnosed with carpel tunnel in May I have been more hesitant to pick it up since the Dr and the nurse at the office there kept telling me that playing guitar contributes and with some can even cause carpel tunnel. Personally I think that it wasn't playing guitar that did this to me. It "might" have been a contributing factor...I'll give ya that...but I think "the cause" is the computer work I do at my job. I have had this job for a year and a half now...and during that time...I have had many periods of pain while sitting at my cube that caused me to get up and walk away from the desk. It hurts.

As I played and got re-familiar with my neck and fretboard I started to notice things. It's kinda like any other kind of workout...when you are just starting to do your warm up with any kind of exercise, your mind kinda has the tendency to drift and you do certain things by rote. As you attention returns...if you are paying attention....you start picking up on certain things...form...the way things feel...the fact that you are doing things on autopilot instead of thinking things through...the tone...

As I meandered through several things I started to experiment and fool around. I can't say it was truly creative or productive but I will say it brought me back to a place I need to be. I started to feel as I was playing. Ahh...I remember this...my best friend...my old friend...the wood...the steel...this fretboard...I can play one note...and I could cry...or I could fill with joy...

This is an important point because I can play whole passages of music...including music I have written...with no thought or emotional tie to it because I have played it for so long...my hands just do this by physical memory and I fly through things unattached...personal note here...I hate it when I do this...there is no emotion and it is purely structured ritualism...going through a motion...and this is something I dislike doing...but I will say it is natural and normal...and every artist knows exactly what I am describing...especially musicians...because it is common...but I don't like it. It's like just phoning it in...and I try never to do this while performing...but when practicing...it isn't uncommon to slip into that space.

When there...personally...I need to pull myself out of it because music...specifically...and art...generally...is about being creative and expressing emotional output and feeling.

If you ain't feeling it then you ain't playing it right.

So somehow I wondered over to one of my songs...and I started humming along to it as I played...and I was stirring inside. After playing this way for a short while...I went to get my binder and pulled out my lyrics and started to play my songs in earnest. I played one song after another...singing...playing...feeling.

It's been awhile since I have done this and it felt really good. As I played I was listening at the same time...and as I listened...I found myself reconnecting with my own music...with my own art. Now...most of my music...very few people have ever heard. My wife...knows a good deal of it...my children to varying degrees...are familiar with at least some of it...Harmony probably knows my songs better than my sons since she has lived with me and been present in the most recent years. Some of the stuff is old...some is not. However I feel bad because none of this has been recorded...old and newer...and I need to get this stuff recorded just for posterity's sake if nothing else. I want to be able to gift it to my kids...so that they can remember...

I don't know if anyone else will ever hear my music. I am not so sure anyone would care...

As I listened to the songs myself...I kept feeling it and thinking...this stuff is pretty good...I don't know about my renditions of it LOLOL...but the songs are pretty good. The ideas are there. Then as I play and sing I think about where some of the songs came from...different people in my life...and I started thinking about how others might relate to what I am saying in some of these songs...how some people have related to my songs in the past...and it started occurring to me that...as personal as my music is to me...it will mean different things to different people and I started seeing how things that I've written could be taken in by other people...and they would make their own meanings to the music.

Then I remembered a conversation that I had with a very good friend of mine...Tracy...many many years ago...sitting at a food joint...I told him that I wanted to get my music out to people...without even putting my name on it...so that the focus is the music and not me...and I had a flood of these memories come back...feelings and impressions...desires...hopes and dreams...and a reconnect...for me...with my artist inside.

I could certainly use extra income...we are really tight and the stress is high over finances in our home...we both have jobs and we have a side photography business...but I am always looking for ways for us to help ourselves out of the financial bind that we are in...the business man in me wants to make money from my hard work...but I sometimes...often times....wonder...if anyone would care or be interested in my art...I often doubt it...but it does make me wonder...the artist in me is starved for the pats on the back...the attention....but my heart and soul is about moving people and helping others...and in that...it makes me wonder if my music could help...could my music move people?....could my music move you?

It moves me...so maybe...just maybe...it might be bigger than me...