(My Guitars – Storytellers All: Photo taken February 2016)
Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.
—Andrés Segovia (21 February 1893–2 June 1987)
Luthier Series, Cordoba guitar (2014), presented to me by Dr. David Reinke.
Since the start of this New Year, I have been on a weekly reflective journey looking at the various elements in my life that I did not think formed the building blocks of writing an epic fictional story. I not only stalled out of attempting to do so many times throughout my life, I felt defeated by my perceived limitations.
Many years passed by—even decades—before I had the capacity to summon together the courage to put all of my poetry together in one place where it was fully edited and revised to the best of my abilities. Taking this journey allowed me the opportunity to see the evolution and arc of my poetic development. It gave me a historical and philosophical understanding of the work I had achieved and the sources of inspiration that fired my desire to write in poetic form.
I could not look at my musical experience with such a reflective eye because of the pain I encountered in playing the classical guitar. I considered it to be taken, ripped, away from me in 1977 due to a congenital and physical dysfunction that seriously affected my fine motor coordination.
I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.
— Jimmy Page (9 January 1944– )
My childhood guitar was a Goya that looked very similar to this guitar (c. 1958).
Starting at the age of four, I became deeply involved with music. Poetry became a full pursuit for me twelve years later. One would think that I would have written more about this love affair with music in previous blog entries, but the pain in losing my ability to play closed down everything in me. I still repress and hesitate to explore this time in my life where I centered myself in the full vibrancy of music.
Discovering the guitar is like finding a new continent that exists within your fingertips.
— Will Hodgkinson in Guitar Man
The wonder, awe and inspiration I had received from playing the guitar was too vulnerable for me to consider further; it was, in fact, a complete and utter loss. It took me years to be able to listen once again to the classical guitar being played, let alone being able to open myself again to the love I once had for it.
I have been blessed in the gifted and multi–talented teachers I have had who have taught me to play, first, the piano, the classical guitar, and the concert pedal harp. I have also had the opportunity in having musicians and performing artists around me who encouraged my playing along with them, not only in bands and duos, but also in dance, film, theater, and storytelling.
Every time you pick up your guitar to play, play as if it’s the last time.
— Eric Clapton (30 March 1945– )
Chet Atkins designed, Gibson guitar (c. 1976). Solid-body, electric classical model.
These teachers and artistic collaborators taught me invaluable lessons about myself and how that sense of identity can be merged with the art of performing. Some taught me the technical aspect of the instruments themselves, while others showed me that everything we do is an extension of musical expression.
Only in the last several months have I understood that my guitars were, in their own intrinsic sense of being, storytellers themselves. They are not only inanimate objects, but they reflect a deep and profound sense of being, and they operate on fundamental levels of empathy, emotion, energy and enlightenment. When musicians reach a fluent synchronization with them, these instruments attain an inextricable status with their surrounding environment. They become part of the storytelling. Sometimes, perhaps often, it is no longer the human who is delivering the story, but the instrument itself takes over, merging into a unity with the performer and, then by this magical extension, the audience. Distinct elements involved in the full experience of storytelling now become one.
What I’m trying to do is make impressions. I think of myself as a colorist, adding different colors and shades by using different techniques and touching the guitar in different ways. I’d like to play sounds you can see if you’ve got your eyes closed.
? Lenny Breau (5 August 1941–12 August 1984)
The instrumentation, while being delivered in a technical manner, falls away, and the spirit of the story awakes. It emerges into the audience’s awareness and can then be experienced in a more complete way. The story becomes a reality. Perhaps it now becomes the true instrument of performance. Reality morphs into the story as the story build its power now within our own senses of comprehension.
Guitar presented to me by Maestro Miguel Abloniz. Made by Ernest Koroskenyi (c. 1970).
The guitars pictured here are not just pieces of wood held together with glue, slapped on with varnish, pieced together with inlay, snapped into shape by machined parts and strung with nylon strings. The artistry and craft of their makers reflect the knowledge and sense of the universe from which they were designed, fashioned, assembled together and constructed.
Each has its own unique voice and spirit. They have moods and can exhibit moments of dullness as well as demonstrate the utter brilliance and petulance of their identities. They can sulk, purr, and be frightened as well as frightening. It has been an honor getting to know them. It has been humbling to understand that there is no music without them.
It was my 16th birthday—my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do – write songs and sing them to people.
— Stevie Nicks (26 May 1948– )
The wood that constitutes most of their form is a living membrane, it forms the skin of the auditory universe inside and around us. Its vibrational quality is an echo of our souls and helps represent what the spirit of the world and time offer us. It can ring like a bell of utmost purity. It can knell like a banshee’s scream. It can help transform our understanding of life and death. In a great luthier’s hands, the wood fashioned by their workmanship and proficiency becomes momentarily immortal. When a musician sounds, or taps into, this potentiality held within the wood, the lyricism revolving inside the instrument attains a brief, yet infinite grasp of death and life.
My First Guitar (Tuxedo c. 1936), originally my mother’s.
In 1952, when I was but a child, I remember seeing a guitar (I did not know that is what it was called at the time) in one of a series of deeply built cabinets in my parent’s basement. As I could not easily reach for it and bring it out to me, I had to partially crawl into the space where it was being stored to obtain it.
When I brought it out from the cabinet, I leaned it against the opening. The bright morning light streamed through a nearby basement window. Dust motes circulated into the light and danced nearby me. The guitar was almost the same size as me. It seemed to speak to me and invite me to touch it.
I can still see my right hand reaching out to it and my index finger moving right to left across the top of the fingerboard against the strings.
You can’t think and play. If you think about what you’re playing the playing becomes stilted. You have to just focus on the music I feel, concentrate on the music, focus on what you’re playing and let the playing come out. Once you start thinking about doing this or doing that, it’s not good. What you are doing is like a language.
You have a whole collection of musical ideas and thoughts that you’ve accumulated through your musical history plus all the musical history of the whole world and it’s all in your subconscious and you draw upon it when you play
— Joe Pass (13 January 1929–23 May 1994)
Something happened to me. I can only express what occurred by saying I disappeared into the sound the strings made as a result of my touching them. Not solely for the purposes of being dramatic, but it was one of the finest moments of my life. I awakened. With the sound of the strings still in vibration, I said aloud, “I need to learn to play this instrument.”
On May 23, 2014, I was able to overcome my fear of writing a story I had yearned to write for most of my life. I finally listened to the child in me who said aloud, “I need to learn to write this story . . . ”
Related Links:
Andrés Segovia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Segovia
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=andr%C3%A9s+segovia&qpvt=Andr%C3%A9s+Segovia+&FORM=VDRE
Jimmy Page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Page
Will Hodgkinson:
Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey, or, You Love that Guitar More than You Love Me. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2006. Print.
http://www.willhodgkinsonwriter.com/books/guitar-man/
Eric Clapton:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002008/
Lenny Breau:
http://www.lennybreau.net/video/
Stevie Nicks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Nicks
Joe Pas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pass
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=joe+pass&qpvt=Joe+Pass+&FORM=VDRE
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products or services that I have mentioned here. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
© 17 February 2016 by A. Keith Carreiro
1 comment. Leave new
Quite a journey you have gone through dear husband…I love this blog because you have shown your years of study for an instrument, and dedication to a guitar. An instrument becomes an Extension of one’s Self! After almost three decades together, you and I love our guitars! You are an excellent writer, and an excellent guitarist! Actually my first guitar was a Goya! One plays an instrument for the pure joy of playing the instrument! And we met because of Music! We made a CD together! “The Wishing Stone”. I composed that Album….I will never hold your brilliance in music; However I was blessed to have you, my beloved awesome husband doing lead guitar!