Guitar Blues

I am sure you have watched those movies before where an old person takes up a new hobby and excels at it. Like "The Visitor". It's escapism I tell you. A non-suspecting me accompanied The Rabbit and Sambaman to the Guitar Center. Now, Sambaman is no mean musician. Son of a musician, he is one of those people who can play something that he hears randomly playing on the radio. The Rabbit is pretty good for a self taught guitarist, and then there is me - the deaf sheep of the troika.

Don't get me wrong. I consider myself a connoisseur of the finest guitar solos ever played. If I wasn't such an atheist, I might have even considered worshipping the likes of Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Gilmour and Santana. Now, Rabbit and Sambaman are flirting with a couple of flashy bright things. Soon they have these beauties around their necks and are literally rocking out and playing the blues as if their granddaddies were in a band of waiters in New Orleans that entertained guests during breaks from serving them giant Cajun shrimps. Tired of watching little kids serenading their parents nearby, I decide to jump in. It takes me five minutes to figure out where the cable from the amp connects to the guitar and then half an hour to figure out the amp itself. When I finally hear the sweet sound of my escort, it's scratchy - like Hendrix playing with arthritis or something, staccato all the way. A couple of Gothic babes pass by and I shut my eyes tight, pout my lips and nod my head a la Page, and give all the strings a go, giving them a preview of my cacophonous symphony. They flee.

Sambaman tells me we are starting a band. I tell him I will write and sing. Sambaman doesn't know that I write songs as well as Clapton does advanced calculus. One of my musically inclined cousins tried once. The deal was that I write and she puts music to my contribution. The words have remained poetry ever since, and she has changed careers, probably drowned by the guilt caused by me and has become a Russian translator. Later, Sambaman develops paternal instincts and starts teaching me on a big beautiful acoustic thing. Short term amnesia sets in, not to mention a very early stage of arthritis wherein my fingers, stubborn as my refusal to keep going, become asymptotes, and that too, without any kind of harmony amongst themselves. I somehow convince Sambaman that I do not need to learn how to play chords in order to become a successful guitarist and that humans aren't designed to learn anything new after 25.

Flashforward to tonight. I get a duster out, and toil on my dark as cocoa guitar. I start implementing the single string theory that I sold last evening as well as Dennis Hopper sold cocaine to the American public. I am not even sure I can tell the difference between the last two strings. It's gotta be either high or low. There's no B flat and B sharp in my world. They sound like Victoria's Secret units to me. Frustrated, I run to the safety of Youtube, and its tempting plethora of useless drivel. And finally, I vent it all - here.