How the guitar became my identity as a teenager.
Suddenly, I had a voice - and I haven't shut up since.
When you're a child, most of the big decisions in your life are regulated by your parents. When to go to bed, when to do your homework, when to do your chores, etc. Then one day, all of this begins to change. When you are a young teenager, you know, around 13 or 14 years of age, these changes come with a lot of confusion. Bigger schools, more classmates, a part time job after school and more responsibilities you now have to face in the wake of becoming an adult. This article takes a look at how the guitar got me through my identity crisis and some of the worst years of my adolescence, and eventually gave me the confidence to speak up and stand up for myself.
I'm about to jump up onto my soapbox.
I hated school. I was bored to tears in most of my classes, from elementary school all the way through high school. I just wasn't an academic student. I was the epitome of an introvert, and I was a quiet, shy kid. I got picked on and bullied in the first few years of elementary school, but that eventually waned. I was also a nonconforming kid. If everyone else was doing something one way, I didn't need a reason to explore other ways of doing it. I think that even that early on in my life, I knew that just because people did things, thought things and said things a certain way that was popular, it didn't mean that it was the only way to do, think or say them. This was me thinking outside the quadrilateral parallelogram (the box), but not truly understanding why I was doing it. Why was I so different? Was there something wrong with me?
Sometime in early 1976, I discovered the guitar. Trying to think back that long ago is a little difficult, but what I do remember was my not really thinking too deeply about the guitar becoming a life-changing chapter in my youth. I mostly wanted to take guitar lessons, simply because my best friend was also taking lessons. I guess that I must have thought that if he could play the guitar, well, so can I. My motivation was limited to childish competition between friends.
I had nothing else going on in my life anyway. I wasn't playing team sports in school, because I simply wasn't all that athletic. I wasn't on the debate team because I didn’t know how to arguing...and honestly, I really couldn't have been more apathetic. I just wasn't a conformist. Sure, I liked to play football and basketball and argue with my friends, but to do such things in front of an audience was completely out of the question.
Maybe, just maybe the guitar will give me some sense of direction. Well, that's exactly what happened.
Music just made sense to me in a world where so many things in my life did not. Playing the guitar came relatively easy to me. I would play for my friends and they would sing along. They got used to me always having a guitar. I was finally being accepted for something I was good at doing. This was an addicting proposition.
“I'll bet that if I actually practiced everyday, I could get really good on the guitar and it would impress even more people”. I guess, I must have had a clue. I practiced day and night until I had to be told to stop playing my guitar and go to bed. I loved the guitar because it gave me a voice. It gave me confidence and it gave me an identity.
When I got into high school, I started playing the bass guitar in the school band. Again, I had no idea that I would take to this instrument so easily. The bass guitar felt like an extension of my hands and arms. There's not much that feels better than acceptance and adulation from your classmates and your band director. I was known as "Dave the bass player", all through high school. Having some kind of an identity as a teenager is terribly important at that age, in any circle. I had mine and it was like cocaine to me.
I practiced every chance I had. I discovered cassette and reel-to-reel tape recording. This opened a whole new world for me too. I recorded everything. I learned how to multi-track and ping-pong recording using two and three tape decks and a small mixer. To me, this was like being a painter and discovering new colors on my pallet. I played in lots of bands all through high school. Music was becoming the air that I breathe. I knew that music and being a guitar player was my chosen path. It was my path - but I also knew that I was going to have to work hard at becoming a better musician, and practice everyday for the rest of my life.
A Life Choice
You see, when most people hear me play the guitar now, they don't know about the labor of love and the years of dedication, commitment and practice it took to get to where I am now. 47 years and counting - do the math. That's hundreds of thousands of hours of experience, learning, playing, practicing, teaching and unconditional commitment to the art of music. It is what some would call a "life choice".
Most of my adult students have a quiet regret of not starting to learn a musical instrument when they were kids. Believe me, there's no guarantee that you're going to be good at it, no matter what age you start. I know band mates from high school who haven't touched a musical instrument since high school. I know guys I played in bands with, years ago who simply quit playing altogether. How do you walk away from something like that?
Being a musician, being an instrumentalist is something you do everyday. This doesn't mean you actually play or practice your instrument everyday. It means that being a musician/instrumentalist is your identity everyday. You live it everyday, you breathe it everyday, you talk about it everyday, you eat it for lunch everyday - it becomes your life - it becomes your identity. You either are or you aren't. There are no shortcuts, no easier ways to achieve this understanding. If there were, everyone would be doing it.
I got lucky. I found it early on and it stayed with me. Sometimes, you just have to listen to that voice deep inside that tells you what your truth is and the path you need to follow to find your identity, your peace and your happiness. I don't think that it is ever too late to do this, no matter what age you are. Honestly, there is nothing more rewarding than to possess the superpowers of being a musician. You should try it.