Rock Star Hour

Fucking sex, dude.

Oh my god, it was so magical. The electricity surging through my body in the moment. My heart is singing. It was like ... sex.

Yep. Just got done playing guitar for three hours. My hand hurts in that good sort of pain. Like when your muscles ache the next day after a good run.

I've started running again. I went four times last week in my neighborhood. I don't go for very long, but I know I will. Like when I first picked up my guitar and I could barely stretch my fingers to play a C. I knew I could, if I tried. And I could.

Orgasmic. That's how I feel. I've been so discouraged lately. Every time I would play this voice would keep shouting "You suck!" I remember a friend describing that feeling to me months ago, and it's been creeping up on me with my music, trying to slowly stifle my passion.

Like how passion can begin to fade in a relationship.

I needed to spice it up, so I did.

I did the equivalent of having hotel sex. You know what I'm talking about. Sometimes things can start to become routine with your lover. So you go out and have hotel sex, and it is some of the best sex you will ever have. You get a good bottle of champagne, and you take your time, and then you're rejuvenated, glowing, like you just got laid for the first time in months and everything's fresh and new. And romantic again.

Today, I decided, again, that music stores are definitely a place where I want to hang out. There's this buzz about everything. Salesmen running around. Musicians plugging in and rocking out.

And i fit right in. I blended in with everybody else. Like a driver in a car on the freeway. All the other cars in sync with the line of traffic. I was home.

I was at home at Guitar Center today, but even more, hours later, my Strat plugged into my brand new amp, with its brand new cable.

I bought a microphone too, and a stand, and set it up in front of me. I couldn't sing into it. My parents were downstairs; plus, my dumbass in the excitement left out a very important piece of what will be my vocal ensemble: something to plug the damn mic cable into.

But I swear, I set that damn thing up in front of me anyway, and played my heart out; and I swear I began to see my own aura around the edge of the mic as if my spirit were singing even though the rest of the world were oblivious to it for this moment.

As if I needed an excuse to go back to that store.

There's always an excuse for a musician to go to the park on a pretty day, with birds and people and others just waiting to listen; just as there are always new ideas of things to add onto the guitar player's shopping list.

I have been working on my fingerpicking, despite the unruly voice in my head. The voice encompasses not only my most inner insecurities, but the negative forces of the world. The mount of people who are going to continuously tell me that I can't do it.

I'm not playing for those people. And I'm not playing for the voice in my head. I just am. Because it is the only thing in the world sometimes that makes sense, though sometimes on the outside I know it can appear to make no sense at all.

I feel just as I did when I picked it up. All over again. When I never wanted to put it down. When I forgot what I used to do with so many hours. And tomorrow, when I have the house to myself, I'm going to crank it up and sing till my heart's content.

And then I'm going to sing some more.