I have this can of Ginger Altoids sitting on my desk. It has been with me for sometime now. In my experience here are things that we take along on trips or other ventures not because they have some monetary value but because they have nuzzled out a place in our space and it would seem wrong to throw them away. When you are moving these are things you don’t think twice about bringing to the next home. These pieces, these treasures all have stories behind them. There is a wooden elephant that has a privileged place on the ledge of my white board. It reminds me of my good friend and of Africa. And then there is this zamboni parking sign on my closet. I personally think it is funny but no one has ever commented on it. I think its just for me. When my closet is closed and the parking sign is fully visible I chuckle under my breath imagining myself driving a zamboni into the living room. There is a story behind the zamboni sign too. The chair I am sitting in was given to me by one of the hardest working people I have ever met. Every time I sit in it I am reminded of how he is in jail right now and how the justice system has failed him and his family.
Everything has a story.
The Ginger Altoids container is what I use to store my guitar pics. One of my roommates in college, who can make a six string sing, showed me this trick. I ate the Altoids in one sitting so I could use the pic box right away. At this point I knew only a few cords on the guitar and owned two pics. However I was convinced I needed to acquire this skill and all that came with it. You see years ago before I was born my dad played for my mom when they were getting married. I wonder now what song he sang for her and if he had wrote it or if he chose it? All I had known before I started whaling away on the guitar was that my dad played for my mom, and I would play for a girl one day too.
A year went by and my roommates had been very patient as I played the same thing over and over. My fingers were callused, they were sure and focused, able to hit an E, C, A with tuned accuracy. This was enough to write a song, I had had the words written for months. And so I said the words and played the song ‘creation of her smile’. It was really bad. But I sang it for the girl I had wrote it for. She had broke up with me about ten months before this but I was able to corner her and play the song. I think I pitched it to her like I was just showing her how I kinda knew how to play the guitar now. But deep down, and maybe I had prayed it a few times, I was hoping she would want to marry me after the song was played. The logic was clear. To me. Not to her.
I tried this out a few more times. This angle failed with two other girls and since I have written songs for girls but I usually don’t tell them and certainly don’t play for them. Maybe my dad was on to something when he played at the wedding. There is some security there perhaps. Songs are a whirlwind of stories. I write them to remember things now. Sometimes I am remembering a girl I was in love with or liked a whole ton but mostly I am remembering the moments when nothing quite makes sense till I sing about it. The songs that last I can sing and I feel as if God is singing them with me. They are the songs that reach out into my world and nuzzle a place in the ongoing story of life. They make there place with friends and family and beauty and the beyond. I have been writing this one song for a long time now. I can’t quite figure out what it is about, maybe I haven’t lived its story yet.
