I’m sitting here with my purring cat on my lap while I attempt to type (as per). Do other people’s creatures inveigle themselves onto reluctant thighs and balance there like sleeping bats when practicing guitar?
I’ve taken advice from @MarkPeters who’s LL I really enjoyed and was inspired by. I like the idea of tracking progress - but also of understanding ‘where I’m coming from’ because that makes where I think I’m going clearer, so feel free to skip this bit. I’m typing it out for myself. I think it will be a useful map and might uncover some things I’ve been struggling with.
Earworm: “We’re lost in music. Caught in a trap. No turnin’ back.” I heard the Fall’s version of this first, with great respect to Nile Rodgers etc. For me, music was less of a trap and more of a way out of a trap.
I was born and brought up in a small town in South Africa in the 80’s and besides the obvious (Apartheid) and very definitely because of it - although I won’t go into all that, critical thinking and creativity were not encouraged.
My parents were into Jazz and Classical music and my father in particular was brought to paroxysms of bliss by music and handed that down to me. My uncle, a successful jazz pianist in Jhb in the 50’s, emigrated to the UK in 1960 where he played with some absolute DUDES, John McLaughlin and others - more about him later.
My cousin, a punk, grew up to become a jazz guitarist, so there is definitely music in the family. But I was always an art person. Maybe, like Viv Albertine and Chrissie Hynde both describe in their biogs, doing music was not for girls. It never occurred to me that I could. I had the requisite dreary piano lessons with a bored and boring old woman, was told I couldn’t sing by a bored and boring teacher and that was that.
I got a place at a school for the arts, doing art (not music) in Johannesburg, I’d bunk out of the hostel on a weekend and go clubbing at alternative clubs (Le Club), if there’s anyone on here who went, giss a shout!
That’s where I discovered the Bunnymen, Siouxie, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Talking Heads etc etc; my tribe, in other words…the post punks and the goths but also Northern Soul, Motown, Ska, Two-tone, Reggae, ‘World’ (as was). Later, in Durban at uni, clubbing at The Rift, The Station etc, into my earholes came Pixies, REM etc etc and also Jazz, local stuff, African stuff, weird twanging guitar sounds, Kwela, arhythmic beats and crazy syncopation. I inhaled it all.
Music was very expensive to buy back then, and we’d do the much vaunted mix tape hand-around thing. I moved to the UK in the mid 90’s. Music, music, gigs, albums and got on with the business of living and making a living (NHS).
In 2016 I got breast cancer and was diagnosed at stage three. They don’t say ‘serious as cancer’ for nowt. It was scary. But it was kind of the making of me in all sorts of ways I won’t bore you with. Half way through chemo, I bought a guitar. My cousin gave me my first few lessons, turned me on to Justin Guitar. I couldn’t hold down the strings at first because chemo causes temporary peripheral nephropathy (it’s flipping sore) but that faded and I found an in-person teacher the following year.
Progress was on, off - mostly off. But I learned a few chords and things became less awkward, as we all experience. The more we practice, the more muscle memory kicks in and we absorb lesson after lesson.
Cue Covid and all that. My guitar teacher returned to Italy. I was a front line worker but you know how boring it all was besides anything else. I started writing songs. A friend at the time said “let’s do a band” so we found a studio to rehearse in, in between the various lockdowns. Sadly, we fell out a few years later, but really, that’s where I got the idea, a revelation to me, really. Learn a chord, learn another chord, chuck em together, chuck in some lyrics and there you go. Just like that, I made the leap from playing in my room to, duh, the whole point of it - performing.
The band never got going, but I did start open mic-ing. I don’t want to be a singer-songwriter, I want to be in a band. I WILL be in a band. Please, the gods and whoever else I should be appealing to, please let me be in a band and do gigs.
I guess I know that the only person I should be appealing to is myself. No one else is going to magically do this for me. The demons of doubt and fear, ever present, need to be vanquished (how dramatic) but quite true. The demons of comparing myself unfavorably to my friend who has been playing guitar for 40 years and others, just isn’t fair and doesn’t help. Stop it. Fear isn’t real, it’s only in my head. I’m 53, but I know it’s not too late, that’s not even a thing actually…I’m doing it now so, so what. That’s where I am.
So then I found the lovely @LievenDV who has helped with stage fright and the lovely @Richard_close2u who is my greatly appreciated guitar teacher.
So of course I get the blues. I’m sure we all know how hard and uncomfortable it is to be a beginner and to not feel competent. I honestly want to turn myself inside out sometimes with the cringe and howl and cry and I shake with actual terror when I go onstage and I avoid it (that needs to stop). But I allow all of this to arise and I acknowledge it - and then I keep on keeping on.
