Since the first pandemic lockdown transformed our lives one year ago this week, I haven’t touched a guitar.
This dismal fact became painfully clear to me the other day. I was folding laundry in my bedroom, and a stray sleeve grazed the acoustic guitar standing next to my bed. Still and silent since last March, those strings once again sang. Dust drifted off the instrument’s neck. A lonely echo rang off the walls. It was as if my guitar had been saving up that sound, hoping I might someday unmute it. My heart hurt. I realized these were the first notes of music I’d produced in a year. And it was entirely by accident, without bodily contact. I’ve admittedly made some pitiful sounds in my thirty years as a musician, but that chord may have been the saddest.