Last night I properly held a guitar!
Last night my buddy, the amazingly talented Bill Lestock, came over with intention of sharing a captivating melody with me. Actually, it was much more than a melody, it was a multi part song. He was interested in my thoughts and possible lyrical contribution to the work. He played it through twice, and then we captured a video performance.
We talked about Bill’s thoughts and mental images for the song and had a really great discussion. I always enjoy finding out what images are in the mind of an artist when a song comes to them. And this is a great song.
Afterwards, I tried to entertain Bill with a few of my tunes. I was playing my resonator guitar on my lap and after a while I had to take a rest. My fingers go numb from the Velcro tape holding the slide to my hand. Billy asked me if I could play anything on a standard guitar. Without thinking about it, I picked up my resonator guitar to illustrate that I still was unable to hold a guitar properly. My left shoulder, arm, wrist and palm were traumatized so severely from my accident that whenever I had tried to hold a guitar in a normal position, I couldn’t. I simply could not imagine being able to get my hand to reach and bend like that. It seemed that my entire arm had shrunk, and my wrist would never be able to flex like it needed to.
Much to my surprise, I felt the neck of my resonator guitar slide nicely into the palm of my left hand. I was dumbfounded. For the first time in over ten months, I could feel a guitar neck in the palm of my hand. I told Bill that I could not do this last week. I know, because I tried. This entire recovery process is a mental trip. I can’t help but wonder as profound an advancement like this is, will it be the last?
Don’t ask about making chords, or even playing single notes, but I’ll take each step for what it is.
I’ll let this old mule haul the blues away!