put your faith in a loud guitar

put your faith in a loud guitar / words and pictures #3

God gave rock and roll to you
Gave rock and roll to you
Put it in the soul of everyone
- KISS

I first learnt to play guitar in primary school. I was never much good, and never much good at practicing.   
 
If I could go back and be a voice of reason on my childhood shoulder, I would say practice. Practice, practice, practice… all those things you dabble in. Life is long and childhood is short. Anything you put time into now will become so much better the older you get and the more time you spend doing it.
 
But instead I didn’t practice. And because I didn’t practice, I didn’t get good, and because I didn’t get good, I didn’t play.
 
It’s a conundrum isn’t it. 
 
In order to gain some ability at anything you have to walk the long road of sucking at it first. 
 
And the length of that road is unknown. 
 
Another thing I would say to little me is, don’t worry about sounding good, doing good, being good. Just have some fun with it, because underneath ‘not good’ there’s always a hidden ‘yet’ buried in there somewhere. You just never know how deep you’ll have to dig, or if you’ll even find it.

But that’s why it’s important not to care too much about getting good, and instead enjoy the trying and the sucking. 
 
Unfortunately little me would have rolled her eyes, then had a tantrum. So, I guess this is a message for me right now, and maybe you too? Or maybe you already discovered this bit of essential life wisdom for yourself? Good for you. Let me know what you enjoy sucking at.
 
Here’s another thought, what if ‘not good’ is just as worthwhile as ‘great’, and the treasure is in the doing, not in the perfecting? 
 
I’m pretty proud of myself for coming up with that. 
 
Now to live by it. There’s just one catch… it requires the superhuman ability of not taking ourselves too seriously. 
 
Something else I’m practicing.

Back to the guitar story...

I realistically first learnt to play guitar at uni, sitting on the floor of friends’ small college rooms. Smoking rollies, drinking instant coffee or cheap cask wine and slowly learning guitar chords. 
 
The two people who taught me the most were Tony and Christine.
 
Tony was a law student, and a few years older than the rest of us. Therefore he was a bit of a misfit god to us fresh first years I suppose. He was in ethos a red headed version of Bob Dylan. He was smart, eccentric and a little bit crazy (in the best of ways). 
 
Tony taught me a lot of Beatles, and I fell in love with The White Album. 
 
Christine was such a cool girl. We became close friends and had a lot of fun together. She was arty, interesting and so much more cultured than me. We were two country girls living in the big smoke. It was such a joy to become her friend.

We drifted apart after a few years. But I'll always look back with a lot of happiness on those times of hanging out in each other’s college rooms talking about art and music and boys, and playing guitar together.
 
Since those early years of first truly learning to play, I’ve continued to be a dabbler. I’ve gone for years without picking up a guitar, to playing daily. These days I practice a bit more, and I even have the calloused fingertips to prove it, but I’m still a hack.
 
A few years ago I was gifted an electric guitar.
 
It sat in the corner for a good long while, intimidating me. 

Why? 

Two main reasons.

1. The old, I might suck at it chestnut
2. I'd secretly fantasised about being in a punk rock band

Looking at that guitar reminded me that I'd never done anything about. Equal parts laziness and lack of self-belief.

So even though I loved the idea of playing that guitar loud, I also thought, what business do I have in my 40s to do that. 
 
Earlier this year I started having electric guitar lessons.
 
I've rediscovered scales, and started learning the riffs to some of my favourite songs. 

I spend a lot of time stuffing up, and it probably sounds terrible, but man is it fun.
 
Reflecting back on the last 20ish years of knowing how to play a guitar, yes I do wish I’d put more effort into it earlier on, chosen to spend minutes and hours practicing and playing instead of whatever else it was that I did with my time. And I wish I’d had the belief in myself to join a punk rock band. 
 
But, you know what? Practicing scales in between making the kids breakfast, rocking out in front of the lounge room mirror and jamming with friends over tea is pretty fucking great too. 

I actually had a lot of trouble writing this story. I knew I wanted to write about the joy of playing a guitar loud. And those few lines from the Kiss version of that song were the first words that came out when I sat down to write this. But I didn’t seem to be able to connect the two easily. 

Here's what I came up with after a lot of writing and deleting... 
 
When I hear that song and those words, it says to me that we are all potential punk rock kids if we want to be. But to get there we’ve got to put some faith in a loud guitar.

Wisdom found in unexpected places (like glam rock) is always the best sort of wisdom in my opinion.
 
Leonie x