dabbling

I do like to dabble. I think dabbling is the key to my happy state. Sadness can't hit a moving target so easily.

On at least four separate occasions I have dabbled with a guitar. The first was when, as a 13 year old, a neighbour gave me an old guitar he found in his loft, complete with a play-in-a-day tutorial book. It was a three-quarter size acoustic with a split from the sound hole to the bridge, and I didn't know a single tune in that book.

Seven years later I moved in with a couple of musicians and the guitarist inspired me to buy a guitar. I still have it, a Yamaha acoustic, and have dabbled with it religiously, once every decade for about six weeks a time. I love that guitar. So much so that I'm determined to learn to play at least one song on it before my time is up. And yesterday I decided that song shall be, Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You. It's apt for a dabbler. Also, it's picking rather than strumming but the chords seem easy enough, so it sounds impressive without being impossibly difficult. That's the theory, anyway.

I feel I must do this to honour the instrument, to be whole in myself, and just being happy doing it for the hell of the thing.