I Thee Wed

My friends are getting married all over the place.  For this weekend, I’m making a trip up to the Bay Area to celebrate the union of two college friends.

You’d think that this would be a post about how being single makes me think I’d really like to get married but that’s just really not in the cards for a long time.  Or at least until I can get to where I want to be in my career.

Or, perhaps, this post would be about what I think about my friends getting married.  Nope, not doing that either.  After all, I’m not married.

But wait, maybe I am already married.  To the interwebs?  Or maybe to my guitars.

Well, the net is my career, so I’m probably married to my guitars.  It is, after all, my guitars that I love. It’s too bad that I can’t think of anybody I’ve dated that I loved more than the feeling of pressing strings onto frets.  And I’ve fallen in love before - hard, and once for a long time - and still, the guitar wins.

I remember practicing guitar in my college dorm room and falling asleep with it still in my hands.

I remember naming my acoustic guitar Lillian, after my paternal grandmother, who reminded me of purple orchids and Mu’umu’u sun dresses and afternoon naps.

I remember naming my electric (a black Stratocaster) Estelita, after my maternal grandmother, who reminded me of ballroom dancing and putting on a show, swearing with zeal and vitriol, laughing hard at a good joke.

I named my Telecaster Pandora, knowing full well that it was the indication of a musicianship which would definitely compete with the rest of my life at the time, taking me many places and putting me in interesting situations.  In both, equal servings of good and bad.  Serves me right, seeing as how that guitar was stolen before it made its way to me, and I’m still unclear on the details of how that happened.

Then there’s being on stage.  Lord, how I miss being on stage.

Perhaps my priorities are out of line.  I mean come on, how does one fall in love with inanimate objects?

Maybe I should put it this way: How many of you have fallen in love with learning another language and the culture that came with it?  How about letting your guard down, and dancing your ass off under dazzling lights to the thump of a darkened dance floor?  The wind in your hair on the open road?  Getting runner’s high in the pouring rain, when the air starts to smell like the taste of sugar?  Getting dangerously close to that delightful nausea on the spinny cups at Disneyland?

Yeah.  It’s a lot like that.

So I guess this turned into a post about guitars.  Huh.  Interesting.

So tomorrow I will be around a newly married couple.  Being around people who are in love remind me that I am in love.  My heartstrings stretch over frets.

Maybe I should play a show soon and I won’t pine over this so much.

Yeah.  That’s a good idea.