thoughts on guitars and poetry

I spent a good deal of the afternoon and a separate section of the evening with a guitar in my hand.

This afternoon was spent with my shiny new Ibanez dreadnaught, digging in and really getting to know what it can do. A good guitar makes you a better player, and this one’s doing the job for me. I haven’t spent as much time with it as I would like with everything that’s been going on. I get very self conscious about my playing in standard tuning — I need to practice constantly to feel good about it, and when I don’t have time, I fret about it a lot.

I do wish I had started playing guitar before I did (in my late 20s), because I think I could have been a pretty good player if I had. As it is, I’m a competent first position fingerpicker willing to make occasional forays up the neck when I’m feeling adventurous. I do not think I’ll ever be better than that unless I woodshed far more than I’m capable of right now, and that bugs me from time to time.

Still, it gives me great pleasure to play and write the occasional song (I worked on one today).

The evening offered a different perspective — I pulled out my 20s era Regal, “Blackie,” which I use strictly for playing slide. It’s not a piece of crap at all, but an instrument that was set up to be played lapstyle for Hawaiian music. I removed the high nut off it but continue to use it for slide.

It’s what’s called a “ladder-braced” instrument, with an open headstock and a 12 fret neck, and quite small compared to modern guitars. The fingerboard is actually numbered so you can tell what fret you’re at when it’s in your lap — kinda quaint.

This thing sounds dead as a doornail until you slap it into Open D or G and toss a hunk of brass on your finger. Then, it cuts the air like a Dobro and delivers a right-on authentic blues sound.

I love playing slide. Again, I’m not a great slide player, but somehow, I care less about that when I play; the sheer joy of chord and note experimentation and sonic pleasure takes over, and I feel far more free than I do with the big dread; it’s almost as if I forget to care about my limitations.

I think, sometimes, about the parallels between my guitar playing and my poetry. I wish, sometimes, that I had more of a beginner’s mindset with my poetry. I try to get back to it but it’s hard. I experiment but I care too much for whether I’m writing a good poem or not, rather than caring about that joyous sense of doing something because it feels good.

I need to be more of a slide poet, I guess.