Today is full of commemorations of massive murder, but the IA had more urgent questions. “He taught you bar chords? Those are hard! Jacob still refuses to even try them.” Jacob is Ben’s friend. Ben, eldest son, Itinerant Artist, was having his long-distance chance to hear how the Old Dog Year is going. He’d only been back down from the Arctic for a week or two, no Internet connection yet but the phone works. He’s a gentle pile of bones, but the IA did had some strings to pick with what the Teen Vegan Punk-rock Intellectual (his bro) had chosen to start me up with.

The IA is a musician and a sometime guitar teacher – and he’ll go back to his music degree sometime, too, I’m sure – so he has a little stronger background than the TVPI. (But I can learn from anybody. At any distance.) He had praise for my efforts, including a truly catastrophic attempt to play the blues over the phone without a warmup. (I haven’t played it that badly in at least a week). 

“You’ve played every day on a broke-neck garbage guitar? For how long? That’s a victory right there!” Thanks, IA. And you’re right about another thing, too: an experienced, face-to-face teacher might not be a bad investment. One wandering phone call brought encouragement, a promise of emailed chord diagrams to expand my repertoire, and also inspired a pretty satisfying guitar workout. So maybe feedback helps. So maybe I do need more regular and immediate instruction. But hiring a teacher? Well! That does seem like rather a public commitment, don’t you think?