EMOTIONAL RESCUE? BUDDY, IT’S JUST A GUITAR

An emotional rescue always happens at the same time. Guaranteed.

First, we go through some things, then some more things. Just to keep it interesting, we go through even more things.

Sometimes good, sometimes not so good, sometimes in between.

I’m focusing on ‘sometimes in between.’ Why?

As a constantly adjusting guy in a constantly changing world, I’m hoping you know how to handle things when the good times roll.

Do you? Because if you do, then you know good times come with music.

This music:

A girl in junior high moved away. She was popular and smart and sassy. I noticed something about her, a quality I’ve noticed in most everyone I’ve ever cared about.

She had a certain spirit, a wild spirit, that she infected her friends with. They all lit up together. Then she moved. It felt like a break-up when I heard ‘This Diamond Ring.’

Turned out it was a good warm up for the real thing, real break-ups and real diamond rings.

Whose Emotional Rescue?

Going through things takes time, and it grinds away day after day. People in prison are going through things at a slow grind. They’re not who I’m not talking about.

Instead, I’m thinking and writing and explaining the emotional rescue needed for everyday life.

In good times we embrace, in bad times we get to work, in between those two what happens?

Some Russian writer, Chekhov, said it’s the day to day life that kills us because we know our roles in good times and bad. We know what to do then, but week to week, month to month?

“Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day to day living that wears you out.”

Thank you for that, Tony.

I watched Ken Burns explain how he started out: “I had a film about the Brooklyn Bridge and no money. I could get a job and put the film on the shelf, but I knew if I did that I’d blink a few times and be sixty and wonder why?”

Not an exact quote, but I like the idea of a successful guy doing good work after coming to a certain realization. He embraced a steely determination, his wild side, and went through some things.

He rescued his vision, was his own knight in shining armor, and the rest of us are better for it.

What’s It Take For A Rescue

First the theme song by The Rolling Stones.

Is there nothing I can say, nothing I can do
To change your mind? I’m so in love with you
You’re too deep in, you can’t get out
You’re just a poor girl in a rich man’s house

Did you click the link? Like the song? Do you feel like a poor girl in a rich man’s house, too.

During this covid pandemic and confusion and mistaking harebrained opinions from irresponsible sources for scientific data, something’s got to give, and it has.

Big, strong men, hard men, guys unafraid to say what’s on their mind, have turned into victims with the permission of the biggest butt-hurt president to ever grace the the national stage who gave us four years of screaming about his injustice, his unfairness, how he’s mistreated, all the time living with an economic cushion for comfort.

Now his fans have taken up the same delicate feelings, and no one understands them.

I’m not one of them, but here’s what I’d do if I was: I’d find a creative outlet to produce something nice from the emotional struggle and strain shared every time they hear about a stolen election, mask mandates, vaccinations, racial equality, economic diversity.

If it hurts bad to acknowledge American history in the fullest context, try painting a picture of reality with you in it.

Maybe a poem? But not one that starts with a man from Nantucket.

It could be something to do with music?

Music Soothes The Savage Beasts

For the sake of simplicity, look at a guitar. Just look at one and remember this: I watched an instructional video of a man playing an entire song with one finger.

So, when you say, “But I don’t play guitar,” know that you can if you have at least one finger on each hand, one to press strings, one to strum them.

As your new music teacher, I can tell you something important happens when you pick up a guitar and pluck one string in the same rhythm and some sound level. Over and over and over.

You get bored with one string. Well, sunshine, there’s five others. Are you still bored?

Each string is tightened over 24 frets. Do the math on possible notes: 6 strings X 24 frets = 144 notes.

Still bored? A piano has 88 keys. Is that better? But no one tucks a piano under their arm.

Since we’ve agreed on a guitar, is it acoustic or electric? Do you buy a beginner, or shell out the bucks knowing that even if you don’t play, it will look good on the wall. Someone might play it.

My first guitar was rough, I tell you. During practice it felt like the sides of the frets on the neck were sawing my fingers off.

The next one was a classical acoustic with a cracked back that hummed like it was over-driven, but I liked that roomy fretboard.

Then an overseas acoustic, a Vega with a little pedigree of being assembled in the Martin factory. But it was a Vega and it was enough.

After that came a knock-off Strat that couldn’t stay in tune, a 12-string, then the big daddy, an American Standard Stratocaster. It was purple, either eggplant, or Midnight Wine. Sold it to a church band for $666.00.

My current ride is a Super Jumbo Epiphone acoustic.

Next up is a Fender Telecaster with a neck like a baseball bat. I’ve got a feeling the person who described the neck had never played baseball, but you never know.

My sights are fixed on a Baja Tele, or a 52 reissue Tele. Why? Because I look at them and understand; I hear them and feel the message,

I play them and . . . I’ll have get back to you on this one when I have one to play.

The hunt it on and I’m full of excitement.

How about you? Leave a comment about your current guitar, and the next one.

When does an emotional rescue always happen?

Just. In. Time.