2.12.2013

hindsight: guitar

It started with a junior-sized guitar for Christmas the year I was twelve. A few months of lessons before I got tired of learning music by some old guy named Neil Young (I'd later learn to enjoy his company).

A week at music camp one summer with a full-size hand-me-down.


Group lessons for college credit. A couple of friends who were much better than me, but still let me in on their jam sessions.

A few uncomfortable last-minute church services that taught me to go with the flow.

A silly Taylor Swift impersonation that for some reason won 2nd place.



Two years of late-night crooning in a basement apartment, and a transition summer with nothing better to do.

A few guitar pics thrown in my wallet on the way to the airport, just in case.

Clinging to a borrowed "Made in Romania" model, a precious creative outlet in a country where I struggled to communicate. Carrying it around to all my classes, singing a hundred times in two languages "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" on the last day before Christmas break.

Little did I know it was all leading up to these rehearsals at a nearby orphanage, where I would manage to play barre chords for the first time...


which made necessary this shopping trip and 5 hours of getting to know you... 


this afternoon of hair-straightening, which I obsessed over in my high school years...


this van ride, where everyone found out that I know all the words to "Baby" by Justin Bieber...


and our first performance, a sock in the mouth of anyone who ever had low expectations of orphans.


I beg to differ.


It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
-Arthur Conan Doyle

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