Sears Dialogue

Yvonne and I were in Mexico from the end of January until mid-March earlier this year ... returning two weeks early becuase of the expanding Covid-19 pandemic. We left at the right time because the very next day, the bars and beaches where we had stayed (San Patricio de Melaque) were closed .. sheer blind luck.

We quarantined for two weeks and it was during that quarantine that I decided to get serious about guitar and start studying it ... and so I did ... working on it for 4 hours a day. One day with an acoustic guitar I worked on finger picking ... starting with acoustic rock songs but then moving on to steady and alternating bass songs that most people will have heard over the years.

On alternate days I work worked with an electric guitar ... dedicated to pentatonic scales, arperggios, guitar physical techniques of bending, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato, etc. and memorizing notes and intervals on the fret board.

Before recently returning to Mexico, I ordered two cheap guitars on Amazon Mexico and had them shipped to Joel Barker .. a friend here in Mexico .. so the work .. well play really ... continues .. 

My first guitar was something from Sears .. the kind where you need a vice grip to play bar chords. It was a good learning tool .. I was 14 at the time ... I had wanted one since The Beatles played Ed Sullivan in February that year ... and it arrived at Xmas. I could have gotten a job of course but that would mean doing something in the real world outside the home and I simply did not have enough self esteem to even function in any social context.

I worked with the guitar .. acquired the callouses needed to play .. and just had fun with it .. not really learning to play anything .. not understanding how to learn ... too shy to take lessons ... too shy to play with anybody else ... I haven't thought of that guitar for years until recently .. because of a strong memory associated with it ...

One day .. I was just playing ... probably humming to myself in my bedroom with the door closed ... my own private space ... and my mother came in and asked what I was doing .. I told her I was trying to write something ... she responded ... and I quote ...'oh don't be so foolish .. you can't write songs' ... I never forgot that. Now most people would just shrug that off and say to themselves ... 'oh yeah? .. well I will fucking show you'! ... but I wasn't most people ... I didn't realize that the shyness .. and lack of self esteem .... and a different world view ... came from the fact that I was autistic ... but will evidence itself in these little stories over time ...

I eventually acquired a Yamaha 6 string and I never played that Sears guitar again ... and it's only recently that that moment resurfaced again ... the moment when it was 'revealed' that I wasn't a songwriter ... but what was probably meant was ... not a musician. I don't know whatever happened to it ... I had it for a long while .. I might have given it away ... but karma demands that someone has it ... and that they receive the encouragement to experiment and to play and to tap into their inner muse ... to make their music .. the music that is naturally inside us all ... 

So here I am in Mexico studying guitar the way I wish I could have 56 years ago ... with purpose and intent and a plan ... luckily I am still healthy enough to do this ... and the fact that I am improving is it's own motivation ...but if motivation was seriously needed ... it lives somewhere in a haunting memory of the strings and wood of an old Sears guitar and the young boy still inside me who viewed it as his best friend .... a friend who could have helped ... if only he had learned how to make it talk ...

Phil (9 December 2020, San Patricio de Melaque, 9:09 PM

Krome Koan - 'Live Freud, die Jung'