“You should probably cut your nails if you want to continue.”
His stubby ones are barely visible below callused fingertips.
I realize learning guitar isn’t going to be easy. Or pretty. Goodbye feminine nails I worked so hard to grow out.
Like trying anything new, I weigh the costs and ask how badly I want this.
“Practice half an hour each day, and you’ll have calluses built up by next week’s lesson.”
Yeah, I’ll get on that right away.
“And retrain the muscle memory in your fourth finger. It wants to go straight but it needs to bend so the chord sounds cleaner.”
I look at the troublesome finger playing D major, stuck straight as a pencil with no sign of arcing. Old and set in my ways, I doubt how much practice will help. My fingers resort to their former positions like good students.
“Save your money and teach yourself,” my brother had said. I had tried that, but teaching myself isn’t helpful when I’m teaching wrong.
I didn’t know there was follow-through in guitar like in basketball. I didn’t know to wrap my hands tightly around the neck like gripping a baseball bat. Heck, I didn’t know playing guitar was so much like playing sports, the fingers curved like a body over a high jump bar.
Practice makes better. How badly do I want to be better?
I remember I am finished school, worried my brain’s glory days are over and are now starting a gradual process of decline. I remember a university professor asking, “Which of the arts most powerfully and universally conveys human experience?”
The class was mute. When we finally answered, we said theatre. There are wrong answers in the humanities by the way. The professor said no. Music. Who are you?
Tonight I am taking scissors to my nails.
textingthecity 
it’s an adventure!!! you’ll be an aficionado in no time 😉
thanks for the vote of confidence Krystle! I forgot how hard learning an instrument is–one’s fingers do not naturally bend how they’re supposed to bend for guitar! But I guess as they say, no pain no gain 🙂
I used to play the piano but haven’t touched it in years and my fingers are still very supple and strong which comes in handy for a myriad of things like eating with chopsticks.
haha, yay for strong fingers!
Why is music the right answer? Is it because when there are no words, there is no language barrier to feeling the art? What about visual art as an answer? Visual art doesn’t use language either. What about silent films with background music? Why music?
I’m sure you could make an argument for the other arts too, but ya, I think his point was that music doesn’t need language to speak, and maybe it has more of an immediate impact. You hear a melody, you react quickly to the tone – melancholy, cheerful, eerie, etc. That usually takes a bit longer to build in cinema, and that’s why music is so often used to set the scene. But I definitely do think the combination of visual + auditory prompts are why most of us in the class said theatre, because it combines visual art and music.
BTW, your brain is NOT in decline. 🙂 I tried the guitar but never mastered it. Have fun.
Cary
haha thanks Cary, I really hope it’s not – that was just one of my melodramatic moments coming through 😉