Searching For God Knows What

From "Searching For God Knows What", Donald Miller
Found this well worded in light of our ever-continuing search for an easier way through the maze:


... The businessman said, in a tone of kindness and truth, that nobody he knows who is successful gambles. Rather, they work hard, they accept the facts of reality, they enjoy life as it is.

"But the facts of reality stink," I told him.

"Reality is like a fine wine," he told me. "It will not appeal to children."

Strings

A few months back I started stringing my guitar differently. Which is to say that, after re-stringing, I started winding the ends at the headstock as opposed to cutting them clean and short... like Don does (above). It's a sloppy first look, but it was an intentional departure. Musicality has its ruts. You fall into a methodology, and you do what you do because you've always done it that way. You play a D in a particular voicing because, well, that's how you play it. You're a guitar player, and this is your guitar, and here is how you play it.

But musicality is transient. The best writers, the best players, aren't defined by their instruments. The tool is only a means to an end. The heart is in the idea. I wanted to get away from seeing my guitar as a guitar. To see it, rather, as wound metal, and moving air, and resonating wood. An interface to something important..

I changed the way I string because it reminds me that the instrument is malleable. It isn't a finished product, waiting to be played. It's a starting point.. a collection of pieces waiting to be arranged, and stretched, and used. It alters my understanding of what I can do with it, and it keeps me from sliding into 'knowing how to play guitar.'


I'm trying to think of life in the same light. I don't want to have a job, and a hobby, and a group of friends, and a plan. I want to be open. I want to see life as a series of experiences and opportunities, relationships and passions. I want to see it as malleable. "knowing how to play guitar" is like "knowing how to do your job". It gives you a sense of arrival. I want to feel as though I'm always pursuing, always learning, never arriving. To be aware of all of the pieces, and the ways in which they fit into the entire song.


Kar and I are taking off next week for the other side of the world... namely France. Paris, then Strasbourg, then Nice. Gonna soak it up and breathe it in and take lots of pics.

Au revoir.
JB