Should have been a rock star part 1 Turning 52

June 8, 2008

Today I turned 52 years old. Unfortunately, nothing big has happened. Not that I expected it to. I don’t mean something like a party or a big surprise. I mean something like realization. Something likes enlightenment.

I thought, “Maybe 52 will be a big year.” After all, it’s a very important number in the Mayan cosmology. Nothing happened when I reached 42, which is the answer to the great universal question thanks to Douglas Adams and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It didn’t happen at 39, which is when Mohammed heard from the angel Gabriel. Nor did it happen at 30, when Jesus started his teaching, or even at 29 when the Buddha started his quest for enlightenment.

Maybe 52?

I guess I won’t hold my breath for it. The lady that I studied mediation under gave me a cartoon at one point that showed the way to enlightenment. It had this small guy carrying a bundle on a stick like an old hobo. He started on the path to find enlightenment. The instructions said, “Start going.” And then each successive cartoon showed him further down the road… and said “keep going, keep going.”

Maybe there’s no huge truth out there that opens your eyes to some cosmic reality. Maybe, despite all the proclamations of all the philosophers and religions, it basically comes down to a few small truths that we all juggle around.

There is a constant I see as I look back over a life of 52 years. It is something that always made me speculate on Pythagoras and his “Harmony of the Spheres” and the Hindus and the sound of “Om.” No matter what, it seems that I can track my life through the music I have loved and listened to from the earliest moment to now. The soundtrack of my life!

I used to think that the fact I still loved and collected music was a sign of my inherent immaturity or an attempt to hang on to youth. After all, it used to be that when you became an adult, you put away the childhood things and moved on to the mature, adult things. I even thought, the very fact that the rock music of the 60’s and 70’s still survives and permeates the radio might be more than just it is timeless, but maybe a whole generation trying to hold on to it’s fading youth.

But, that very music plays in the IPODs and cars of the 15 and 16 year old students that I teach. Maybe it is timeless. Maybe it does resonate with something beyond a 3-chord progression?

Both Pythagoras and the “om” philosophy of the ancient Hindu defined a musical tone as a primordial something that holds the universe together. It permeates every thing in the universe. It is the Star Wars “Force.” It is the cosmic glue. It is the universal Web on which we browse. It is one thing that all cultures share, some form of musical expression.

Even now, as I type these words, I sit listening as my Itunes play. One of my long time favs, Todd Rundgren sings. His band plays behind him. I tap my foot in rhythm and even my lousy typing skills take on a beat as the music plays.

I can’t imagine a life without this music playing. I collect it. I read about it. I make playlists and write lists of CD’s I need and want. I make lists of the top ten albums ever made and the greatest guitar parts ever played. I alphabetize and spout trivia. I make CD’s for my friends to share this indefinable musical ambrosia. I have used it to enhance my mood or to change it. I sing it loudly in my car!

You would think that with a love of music as I have that I would be a musician. I wish I were. I am not. I think it may be my impatience to make the music that has me playing the MP3 player rather than the guitar. It isn’t like I didn’t give it a try. In college, I took guitar lessons. I learned a few songs. I played at a church once and with friends. But, I never learned it sufficiently to express what I hoped. Ironically, two of the semesters while taking guitar, and playing college football at the same time, I broke and then re-broke my left hand. It didn’t make for very good fret board work. I was unable to press the strings with any strength for a long time. Mrs. Powers, the guitar teacher, was not very pleased with the football injuries that plagued me.

She was patient and the last semester I took guitar, she scheduled me to play in a recital with several other guitar and violin students. She and I set out to put together an arrangement of The Beatles “Michelle” that I would pick out to the thrill of the audience. It was a tough arrangement for a beginner such as I, but I worked on it and over the weeks, she even commented on my progress. I thought, “Finally a break through!” maybe it was finally time, or maybe it was that I was getting to play a song by the Beatles, whom I worshipped.

The week before the recital, I was walking through the dorm hallway on my way back from the lesson when the tragic happened. The guitar was strapped across my back, neck up, when the string tie on the strap broke. It made a horrible sound as the guitar crashed to the floor, like metal scraping across concrete. A jangle of painful musical tones vibrated down the hall.

I snatched up the guitar only to find the neck cracked. It had split width-wise across the bottom of the neck. The break would not allow the neck to hold straight and give tension to the strings. My roommates and I tried gluing the neck. It wouldn’t hold. We even tied the guitar to the posts of the dorms bunk beds and gluing it in place. But as soon as tension was applied to the strings, it gave. No use.

I went to Mrs. Powers with the news. She decided that this late into preparations for the recital, I would use her guitar. The only problem was, Mrs. Powers was a small lady. She used a small guitar with nylon strings. I was a big college offensive lineman who played a full size guitar with steel strings. It was a tough trade, but I was determined to do “Michelle” justice.

The day of the recital came and I sat with the other students in front of the stage. I was sweating. The guitar seemed tiny in my hands. The strings seemed dull and subdued compared to the steel strings I had gotten my calluses from. Sitting next to me was one of those guys who did not like football players. He always seemed to smile with that shit-eating look every time I would pass him as I went in for lessons and he went out from his. The fact that he was there, and I had visions of him plucking out a masterpiece as I stumbled across unfamiliar strings made his presence even worse.

My time on stage finally came. I walked to the chair sat, fingered the guitar and started the longest 4 minutes of my entire life.

I could hear amplified each and every stumbled note, each sound of fingers dragging across string, each odd string sound in a G chord or a C chord as my big fingers crowded onto the small fret board.

When the song ended, I stood, sweating, and sheepishly made my way back to the seat beside the hyena to the sound of some polite applause. I was embarrassed and dejected. It was worse when the hyena went to stage to announce he was playing the song “Classical gas,” and classic guitar song originally by Mason Williams. “Great!” I thought. “I stink and now he will wow the crowd with that song.” I just figured he was good if he was taking on “Classical Gas.”

My only redemption on that day was when he stunk up the stage. Had Mason Williams been dead, he would have been rolling over in his grave. If he were alive, then surely this rendition would have killed him. I hate to admit that I gloated in someone else’s painful failure, but I did. It was Darwinian. Maybe I wasn’t the weakest of the herd?

I have thought since that time that I wish I hadn’t gloated. I imagine he probably wasn’t the hyena, but my own insecurity probably made him out to be. And, I did continue to dabble with guitars. I even bought an electric guitar to pound around on with visions of doing a dual solo with Joe Walsh or Carlos Santana. I would play with John Lennon or play lead over Paul McCartney’s bass. Unfortunately, real life stepped in. I graduated from college and was hired as a teacher and a coach. I eventually gave my electric guitar to a long time friend of mine who was a real guitarist who happened to be down on his luck.

A few years later I read the book, “The World According to Garp.” Then saw the movie with Robin Williams in one of his best roles as Garp. When Robin Williams is courting the young Mary Beth Hurt, he sees her reading and asks if she is going to be a writer. Her reply is that she is going to be a great reader, because great writers need great readers.

I think that’s it. I was destined to be a great listener because great musicians need great listeners.