My dear Rick. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should reply to your post. I read it once, twice...... then I burst into tears. What an amazing talent you have and yet the things that have happened in your life means you no longer want to have anyhting to do with music. How very sad. If only I had as much talent in my whole body as you have in your little finger.
I've had a guitar of one sort or another in my hands since I was 16. Probably already too late to take it up by then anyway, but I was living rural remote and just didn't know how to learn how to play. There was nobody around to show me or jam with. Yeah, I learned a few cords and could swap them around failry easily, but I never really got anywhere. I was also too messed up. I loved guitar one day and sold it the next saying that I hated the things! I've spent lots of cold, hard cash on electric guitars over the years. I dreamed of getting a band together, but I was too unsettled to really make a go of it. I wrote songs that nobody would ever get to hear......... then burned them when I was in one of my "moods!"
The last electric guitar I bought is still with me. I'd sold a 1968 Gibson SG in perfect condition for a grand (yeah, I know) just a few years ago and missed it almost immediately. I waited a couple of years until the interest grew again and bought a 1990 Fender Stratocaster Plus with a beautiful action and Kinman pups. I sometimes plug it into my Fender 100Wt twin reverb amp and make the walls move, but I know my time has come and gone. Damn it though. This time I'm not going to sell that strat.
Sometimes when I'm bored and feeling down, I drag it out and mess around with it and wonder what could have been, but that makes me even sadder and reminds me of a life totally wasted.
Rick, I truly hope that one day you hit your stride again and reconnect with your music. I hear what you're saying, but please try. If I heard you'd picked up a guitar again, then you'd make me a very happy person indeed.
Ellie.
)
