A woman is not a guitar...

... But to a guitarist, the two are really damn similar.

For quite a few years, my guitar was a stand-in for a significant other. On good days, she was a megaphone for my soul, a reservoir for energy I could not expend any other way. We wrote together, played together, and, unfortunately fought each other. Like most of the women in my life, she is uncomfortable to sleep next to and impossible to have sex with. Like most of the women in my life, she rips my insecurities wide open, and I stop just short of breaking her neck when she refuses to say what I think I need her to.

There came a time in my life when I had to get a new guitar. HAD to. The old one stank of failure. On her fretboard, my fingers would tap out the same old mistakes, run over the same barren ground. We didn't have good memories together, and I feel already that her new owner is a better match. She was someone else's guitar before I'd ever bought her. The guitar I play now is much more an extension of me, body, soul, and mind.

And yes, I too recoil at the feminine anthropomorphization of these instruments. But the fact is, they are very much a yin to me. They are alive, responsive, charged with creative energy, and they endure the frustrated projections of my confused psyche. And like all my interactions with the opposite sex, no communication could really be had until I learned to let go of what I wanted to hear. Sometimes I fight with she, the woman, and she, the guitar, in a contest of wills to see who will define the music of our relationship. Sometimes I do not even consider the possibility of being pleasantly surprised by another's melody. Sometimes I strain for a narcisstic lead when I could step comfortably into a cohesive harmony.

I play my guitar far less than I used to. I have been far more interested in using, stretching, and more or less discovering my own vocal chords. Chest voice. Falsetto. Throat singing. Beat boxing. I seek music with no intermediary between soul and sound. I want notes I can create in any situation, in any place, at any time. The fewer tools and conditions I need to do this thing I feel constantly compelled to do, the happier I am.

Besides, if I am going to despise anyone or anything for failing to help me actualize myself, it might as well be me.

Similarly, there has been a distinct absence of romance in my life as of late. Romance, for so long, was a jawdroppingly epic opus playing forever in my imagination but completely impossible to translate into any jam sessions or sheet music. The abstract ideal could never translate into reality; I was so insistent on holding the dream in my hands, that I could never see what I was actually grasping. The women I fell in love with were, almost without exception, nothing like the princesses of my imagination.

After getting my silly, expensive degree, after putting my contrived compositions to paper, after stepping away from the grotesque and inappropriate juxtaposition of academia and music, I was finally shown what Nada Lila was really all about. Some friends of mine had taken to having large friendly potluck parties in the enormous duplex they were renting. The crowd had some regulars, but there were different faces every time. The food was excellent. One room was devoted to art supplies and communal creativity (talk about a comfortable icebreaker). Another room had a ping pong table. At one point, we filled a third room six feet high with balloons. The main area of the basement was the jamming space, and to me, this was the nexus of the whole affair.

We had a bass guitar, a saxophone, varying numbers of electric and acoustic guitars, and an arsenal of percussion equipment. The participants varied wildly in performance experience and musical knowledge. Only infrequently were keys declared and familiar songs played. For the most part, people just had at it, grabbing any instrument that was free, trading whenever they got bored, and enjoying themselves to the fullest extent possible. Most of the playerse had little concern for impressing each other, or creating anything stunning and powerful, but it did not stop us from generating some excellent grooves.

Expectations had no place in these events. There was sound happening, and one could either join in, shake their ass, or sit back and listen. Conducting was impossible. Composition was out of the question. The music took on a life of its own, greater than any one player, and we were the sum of its parts. At the end of every jam session, I found myself in a blissful daze, physically exhausted and emotionally purged. Sex was never this good.

But it could be, and eventually it will be. Now I see there is no pre-existing formula, no song to rehearse, no demand to make on the world at large. I can hold no expectations over others. I can force no woman into the mold of an angel. I can insist on no rules of monogamy or courtship. One simply picks up the instrument, listens to the sounds all around, and joins the groove.