Climb on a back that's strong....
I was thinking about what made me pick the guitar up this
morning, while the wind whipped through my trees and crashed the chime bells
together like ship rope and metal clanging in a harbor. Sitting here in the
warmth with a slight creeping chill around my ankles from the cracks and creaks
in this old house, warm coffee, a day to write and recover from a cold, send
things out, wait for things to come, pack to go, unpack to stay, breathe and
sit still...
I picked the guitar up finally for good at age 26 in the bedroom
of my Morton Street apartment in the West Village of NYC. I should say that
first. But I'd tried earlier.
In a house on a hill in my last year of college that I shared
with a few really good friends that have stuck, some people I liked but never
got to know and a few total strangers, we'd stay up with our stereos blasting,
finishing our Theses, making sardonic jokes peppered with latin phrases like
Rite and Summa, coming up with post-modern catch phrases for having sex, the
inside clique of smarter-than-thous. Someone brought me "Steady On",
vinyl, Shawn Colvin's debut. I remember taking Billie Holiday off my turntable
for the first time in months (I was writing my thesis on her) and turning the lights
off and listening. I was deeply in love with someone at the time who was
completely unattainable and completely unavailable (at the time--he became
available soon, but that is not part of this story. Its the longing that's
important. The impossibility of the dream). He was hovering in my world like a
teasing raincloud and I ached for That Which I Could Not Have and to distract
from the constant tug and pull of my heart, I strung all-nighters together like
a debutante's add-a-pearl necklace, living on Jolt Cola and coffee and bourbon
and wine and whatever Mark down the hall was brewing. I was writing. Truth be
told, I didn't even know what I was writing. I was writing around the heart of
it. I was spiraling my own intelligence--trying to locate it like a miner, using
Billie Holiday as my flashlight. I felt alternately puffed up with my own
bravado and crushed by insecurity. And then there was the boy, in the corners,
watching, hovering, not landing, going home to the girlfriend, but still flying
around my skies.
It was the perfect moment to discover Shawn Colvin. She writes
the way I think. Around things. Not bluntly. Not so flourid that I can't find
it. But skirting the edge of the emotion so that when she lands, it shoots me
directly in the right vein. I wore out the grooves in a month. At the time, I
was a singer. I could play piano. I knew music - I saw the world through music.
But I could not write a song.
In a few months, I'd graduate with honors and a few latin words
next to my name in the program, with my proud family there. With the boy there,
still wading in the shallow water, hanging around, curious. I'd choose to go
study Shakespeare that summer in the Catskill woods, dive into the deep of the
language, immerse myself in something I wasn't sure I was good at but I needed
to try. A few months later the girlfriend was gone, and returning from the dark
forest, I put my own life on hold to go live with the boy and test those
waters. [Note: Not to sound defensive here, but putting my own life "on
hold" was easy to do at that time. I had no idea where I wanted to journey
next and sitting in someone else's dream was a way of taking a breath for 6
months. A time out. Sometimes lack of direction is a good thing]. I'd watch him
play guitar, steal a few chords here and there, find my fingers on the frets in
patterns like constellations. I bought a guitar that year. A Seagull. For $300.
In a year I'd have moved out, moved to Manhattan to be an
actress (or so I thought). I wasn't sure where I was going but I was sure that
if I stayed there holding his hand and his dream I'd never find mine so I lept
off the highest dive I could find and landed on concrete, hard, with a subway
token in hand and the sound of taxis honking and recycling trucks backing up at
3am. In a few years I let go completely of his hand, right thing to do, wrong
way to do it, but regret is easy in hindsight. Not only did I "get a song
out of it", I had landed on the back of his dream, that dangled behind
him. I landed so hard, I tore off the tails of his coat, took his dream, while
he went another way, found a wife, found a life, found another career. I bought
"Fat City" and learned a few songs, found my way to a gig then a
record then a signing then a tour then a career and now, years later, I'm here,
in Nashville, listening again to "Shotgun Down The Avalanche" and
remembering the day that I could strum that rhythm with ease, after 10,000
hours of practice.
A few nights ago after a show, someone offered their opinion. It
happens. They thought my silly song, the easy stuff, Defined Me and wondered
why I didn't play more of that. My 'joie de vivre' they called it. Why write
the dark songs when I smile so easily. I didn't feel offended by the question,
because we all want what we want. I can't give him the easy laugh all the time.
We all want what we can't have. I countered that my dark songs have a crack of
hope at the end, that I look at what is my truth. I'm not speaking for him,
unless he hears it in between the lines. I think back to Shawn Colvin, who I
have sung backup for by now, who I have shared the stage with, who I sat
backtage with watching silly videos on Youtube. I wanted to say to her the fan
thing, the "you are the reason I bought my first guitar" thing, but I
held back, kept that my secret. But her music this morning, I'm hearing that
thing I'm reaching for. The aching longing, the sadness, with the glimmer of
sky at the end. So things seep in and pour out and its shocking to me that its
been 20 years since that day Kennan gave me the record.
So I'm just gonna sit here for a while and let the record play
and try to recall what it felt like in my fingers to hear this music without
having any idea how to form the chords. The itch of the need. The wanting what
you cannot have. Now I am older and I know that sometimes what you want that
seems out of reach finds its way to you. In its own time.
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