Improvising

Tim bought a guitar nearly 20 years ago when he dropped out of the Air Force Academy. It’s pretty much unheard of to leave the Academy once you get in. I don’t think Tim really had a plan, but maybe he was hoping the guitar would help him figure it out.

This same guitar stands propped against the wall next to the piano. Every now and then Tim will sit down and play. Usually it’s that “Whole Wide World” song from Stranger Than Fiction. But he’s just as happy—maybe even more so—listening to music.

When Will was two, he became fascinated with the guitar. Of course, it was much too big for him so we bought him a kid-sized one. He carried it around every day for a year or two. He strummed away, never minding that the guitar was impossible to tune. And then one day he stopped playing. He was too little to explain why, but I think maybe as he grew he realized that what he was playing didn’t really sound like music. So he moved on.

I’ve wanted to play the guitar for a long time, but I wouldn’t give myself permission to do it. I took piano lessons for years and while I can read music, I can’t play by ear or improvise. I remember feeling tortured once by a teacher who tried to get me to freestyle on “Silver Bells.” Just let loose, he said. But I was an editor-in-training and my brain didn’t work that way. It was all too out there and messy. So I moved on to another teacher. And when Tim and his guitar showed up, I told myself it was verboten until I worked out my piano problem.

But recently it occurred to me that learning the guitar might actually help with learning to improvise on the piano.

Looking back, I think that teacher and I would have had more success if he’d taught me about improvising the same way you’d teach someone a foreign language. I mean, most people don’t go to France and expect to launch into a fluent conversation in French without learning the basics. So learn the G chord first (words) and then the other chords in its family (sentences), and then put it all together into a song (conversation). There’s no shame in working with what you’ve got as long as it gets you where you want to go.

For some reason, this all seems much simpler to learn on the guitar than on the piano. And, anyway, you can’t take a piano with you on a camping trip.

I’m having my third lesson today. It feels a little decadent to play guitar in the middle of the afternoon, but it feels even better to be learning something new. If we have different themes throughout our lives, then the theme of my forties seems to be “letting loose.” Nothing crazy, just things like cooking without a recipe and taking a tap class and writing fiction. Because, said George Eliot, it is never too late to be what you might have been.

I love that Tim bought that guitar to help him find himself and it’s still doing its job.

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