I consider typing a therapeutic exercise. Two midterms in a row yesterday made all kinds of finger muscles hurt. All this thinking about school reminded me of something. In eighth grade I took guitar. We met in the chorus room, a big open space backed by wide, flat wooden tiers like stretched out bleachers. We were always dragging chairs on and off the different levels. I’m still not really sure why.
Anyway once we were a little ways into the semester our teacher often let us grab a guitar from the rack (“Careful! Those are very expensive!”) sit down somewhere and play. We fiddled with chords and practiced our songs for the performance. Oh yes, they invited our parents to come hear us play at 8:00 in the morning. Horrors. I always worked on “Hey Jude,” picked especially because I already knew the melody. You see, I have a shameful secret. I can’t really read music. I can look at notes and name them, but I can’t reproduce their distinct sound in my head. I can’t separate notes from a pattern. Memorizing a melody gave me a way to compare what I played to a mental reference and see where I had gone wrong. I had known the words to “Hey Jude” since I was six. It was the perfect cover.
One morning I sat on my plastic chair, guitar for once settled comfortably on my lap, plunking away. Usually I slowly mouthed the words along with the notes and it didn’t sound a lot like music. For a minute, though, my fingers took over the rhythm on their own. I sat there and played and there was nothing else in the world. It was such a perfect moment. Later my teacher made me switch to the other song I was meant to be learning and it all fell apart. I didn’t know the words to that one. Bus-ted.
Actually I’ve spent a lot of time shoving whole songs into my head in order to learn them. It’s backwards, but it works. Maybe when I go home I’ll dig in the attic and find that guitar.