2003-05-29 - 11:46 p.m.
This is the first Thursday night in almost a year that I have not spent at least some time sitting in front of my music stand, struggling to impress a bit more of "Beginner Blues" or "Ode to Joy" into my mind and fingers before Friday's guitar lesson. My guitar is still in the case where I put it after last week's lesson. After agonizing about it for several weeks, I finally decided to quit taking guitar lessons.
I have been thinking about it for a while, struggling with my natural tendency to shift and change, to get passionate about something, and then to run away from anything at which I am unsuccessful. Over the last year, I have survived a certain level of continuing disappointment in myself, and kept trying, kept practicing and showing up every Friday, reminding myself that people study music for years to learn to play an instrument. I did learn a lot, but I never really mastered anything, never got to the point where I could depend upon my ability to play a piece all the way through without blowing a fuse. And never seemed to make any progress overcoming my extreme performance anxiety. Any time someone was listening, I panicked so completely that I virtually lost all ability to play-- the notes on the page might as well have been Chinese characters or random splatters. So even my few hard won moments of flow with the guitar were witnessed by no one.
I have never been completely sure if my inability to master a piece of music was based on an inadequate amount of practice or just simply the limitations of trying to learn to read and play music for the first time at age fifty. I didn't want to believe that the window of opportunity was closed and locked, but-- realistically-- it might only be open a crack. If I am never going to get past the bumbling stage, or if to do so requires that I spend all my free time in practice, I don't know if that is what I truly want.
My vision for this was that I would spend a half an hour a day practicing guitar, take my weekly lesson, and with that time committment eventually learn to play. Lately I have begun to realize that I needed to give it a lot more time if I was going to keep making progress as the music and methods of playing got harder. And instead of finding more time, I was finding none. I went into my lesson last week, apologizing for having made no progress, and could not do it again this week. So I wrote Mr. Guitar Teacher a e-mail (I know--that's kind of the chicken approach), telling him I wanted to take a break from guitar lessons. Notice I said "a break."
He wrote back right away, saying he understood but he hoped I wouldn't quit playing altogether. And I really don't want to quit. I still have that same desire to be able to pick up the guitar and make music. I can still feel the thrill of learning some new technique for making a beautiful sound. I kind of miss it already. Maybe I will take a few months off and then go back in the fall.
But for right now, I am also breathing a sigh of relief. We've been building fences and benches until dark every night, and so many home improvement projects are calling out to be done. And then there is art, the thing I used to love and seem to have squeezed out of my life. I guess I need to be a little less conflicted about how I spend my time.
But I have promised myself that I will keep playing the "Beginner Blues" just so I don't forget, just so I can go back if I want to, just so I can still change my mind.
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