2025-03-25: picking at it again

in terms of guitar, i've been basically playing classical for years and years now. i also have an acoustic — a big, solid, mahogany thing, with a rich tone — and a couple of electrics. but i haven't really played my electrics in a long time. many years ago, in my 20s, i wanted to play in bands. unfortunately for me, the guitar & the want came after i moved across the country. & i missed out on the bands-with-friends thing as a teenager. my closest friends were into electronic music. i played in my school's wind band. but the guys (and they were all guys) who played in bands back then had already been playing for a while, gravitated together, put on shows, tried to make a go of it after they graduated. none of them were really successful. which sucks, as some of the songs they wrote were killer, but how do you break in when you live in the middle of nowhere, in the era of CD burning, almost a decade before myspace? if you're lucky, and very good, maybe you can one day open for a big has-been regional band, as one of my friends did late last year.

(one guy i peripherally knew ended up playing at montreux and lollapalooza. some guys a few years older than us got signed to warner. who makes it and who doesn't is in many ways heartbreaking and unknowable.)

regardless. i came at it late, a decade and several cross-country moves after i might've had a chance. but i taught myself chords, found songwriting a kind of creative extension of the poems and stories i'd written since i was young, and prepared myself for a future that ultimately never materialized.

my partner and friends and i talked about starting a band. this gave me hope. but we never got it (the band, our shit, etc) together and ultimately, after years of lessons and messing around, i put that dream aside.

the last couple of months i've felt a kind of constricting feeling in my stomach from everything going on in the world right now. things are shit, but there's always music. the future is deeply uncertain, but creative things seem to help: i've been writing a lot, practicing more, finding escape in the things i can control.

a few days ago i picked up my favourite electric — my partner got it for when i turned 30, it's a red stratocaster, maple fingerboard, just the most beautiful guitar in the world — tuned it up, screwed in the tremolo arm, plugged it into my amp.

and, yeah. god what a glorious sound. and i've been messing around with it a little. remembering and relearning the chords for songs i'd written fifteen years ago, playing around with some new stuff too. giving myself a couple little exercises: find some effects that make this sound like a dream pop song, figure out some power chords that sound like 90s alt rock, and so on. i'm still focused on everything else (working on bow hand exercises, writing poems, composing and practicing classical guitar stuff), but this is fun. i've missed this. amazing what comes rushing back. what you want to do when you've got a strat in your hands.

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