Chapter 7

The smack still stinging, Noble started up the car and crawled around the block. He parked in the darkness, opposite the Methodist church, its stain-glass windows illuminated. He didn’t want sympathy from anyone who heard him perform. Although he loved Alexandra, he knew it couldn’t last, and considering his deception, perhaps he had known this all along, that a woman so stunning in beauty and intelligence was never meant for his lips.

He shut off the engine, and the quietness of the block, removed from the throbbing summertime strip, caused him, in his loneliness, to reflect upon his failures, both with the guitar and the woman who slipped through his fingers.

He fought the urge to cry, but he found himself sucking air, and his eyes welled up. He reasoned that it was good to weep every once in a while, as Odysseus wept every now and then. And the guitarist, Noble thought, finds good reason to weep once in a while, simply because it is always a struggle, and only the few survive, or appear to survive. It’s not the case that the guitarist sits on a stack of wealth and drinks or smokes his life away with voluptuous women on each side before entering a sold-out stadium. It’s often the case that the true guitarists are never even heard by most listeners. Yes, the ones who slave over their instrument in the hopes of capturing the appropriate and precise sound which elucidates the web of experience, and that web astounds the listener with a complexity not unlike his own. That the guitarist must play and play on, despite the tumultuous relationships, the divorces, the minimum wage jobs, the many rejections, the child on its way, the rent unpaid, his clothes threadbare, his stomach empty, and his fingers stricken with soreness at every joint, yes, the guitarist, through all of these trials, must endure. This is the bottom line, and such an endurance may bring him to both love and hate his instrument. It will bring him to his knees. He (or She) loves it when it cooperates and hates it when the chords do not reach their expected potential. And at times, he may smash the instrument on the pavement, knowing full well that this one wooden, inanimate object got the better of him, that it has succeeded in confusing and frustrating his plan for a musical permanence in which perceptions and attitudes are changed as they rise to meet the higher consciousness any form of music must establish and propel.

There are times also when the guitarist has but one listener amongst the sea of many: himself and himself alone. Noble believed that the guitarist must somehow have faith in the instrument despite those who shun him, despite those who simply say ‘you should stop playing. It’s a natural talent, and only the few make it anyway, so quit while you still have some time left. Be realistic.’ But the guitarist knows full well, in a fit of laughter or the swell of silent tears, that he cannot stop, that he cannot end this relationship with his instrument. And not ending it does have a price, as everything has a price. He may fail resoundingly. He may be booed from the stage in humiliation, such that his confidence shakes, and he loses faith in those artistic merits he spent many years achieving and many more dreaming about. He may also lose his family, make few friends, and love but a few women. Regardless, the playing continues, and ultimately the guitarist succeeds, only this success is never measured by the applause he receives, or that fabled record contract he signs. The guitarist succeeds only within his own heart, and he or she will bask in this success, if and only if he can dust off those eroding strings once again, and play but one more time for a conclusion he can never see, a dream he will never achieve. In turn, the guitarist must understand his plight and embrace it, only to thrive, as we live but once, and the opinions of others mean nothing compared to those of the self, not to mention that one significant other, his guitar.