Scars
A friend told me once that he rarely played his Stratocaster because he was afraid of getting scratches and wear marks on it. He wanted. he said, the guitar to remain new so that it would to retain its value. In other words, he thought of the guitar as an investment and not something to make music on.

When I heard him say that, it took me by surprise. I've never looked at guitars as collector pieces to hang on the wall or something to be tucked away in a case and forgotten about. Guitars, I thought, were meant to be played with every scratch and ding becoming a memory, something to look back on to remember the days of being tucked away for hours in your bedroom and trying to figure out that Hendrix lick.

And then when you're ready, there are the days of shit-hole bars filled with the stink of beer and cigarette smoke, the days of  leather jackets, and the days of being young. A guitar's scars were part of its charm and character because you were the one who put them there. I believed that a guitar's scars were as much a part of the player as they were the guitar.

And I still feel like that. My old brown strat is all beat to hell because it's a veteran of countless bars and for years it stank so badly of cigarette smoke I could hardly take it out of the case. I put every nick and wear mark on it. (Well, except for when it fell over and chipped the wood at the top of the neck. That one I blame on the wind.)

Along the way, I was scarred too, a nice zipper right down the middle of my chest. And when I got home from the hospital in Indy the first thing I did was to grab my guitar. I could barely hold it, but I managed to play a lick I stole from Clapton, which is from where I steal most of them. Holding that guitar made me realize that the end was not anywhere close anymore, that I had left death far behind me on the road somewhere. (I know he struggles to catch up, but fuck him, let him get his own ride.)

Over the years that guitar and I have acquired many more scars, some visible, some not. I keep playing it, hoping to play it until it falls apart. It'll sing until it sleeps. How else can it last forever?

Hi

Hello and welcome to my blog.

I just began this blog yesterday and already a few people (One person is a few, right?) are wondering what I'm going to write about. Well, I'm not sure yet. I  thought about stealing the Seinfeld idea and calling this The Blog about Nothing, but that's bullshit. Everything, no matter how asinine it seems, is about something. So, that's it. I'm just going to write about all the things in my life that make me happy, that piss me off, and things that give me that WTF moment. I know that writing is going to be a topic for sure. Movies and music are others. Maybe a discussion about favorite authors, books, and movies. You get the idea.  And yes, many times I do feel like that guy pushing when it says pull. But then, don't we all?