Those two weeks away from the guitar…

…when I was in Italy have not done my chops any good. Indeed, picking up my (new) guitar again after returning made me wonder at how easily and quickly technique can fall off. I recall reading somewhere that Segovia opined that technique never stands still; it either improves or deteriorates. I dunno, I normally do a lot of practicing just to keep mine where it is”¦ Anyway, I believe it was Segovia who took guitar neck shaped plank of wood with him so he could exercise his fingers when he was in the trenches during some war, or other (Spanish civil?). I missed my guitar when in Italy and looked forward to playing it again, but when it was actually on my lap I couldn’t really get engaged with it. The guitar sounded great, of course, but I could only pick at it in a rather half-hearted fashion. At the time, I put it down to tiredness. After a minute or two I put the guitar down and went off to get some sleep. I felt a little uneasy, though, since I had assumed that all my creative juices had been building up just waiting to be released in a torrent of wild picking and couldn’t entirely figure out why it didn’t. The possibility that there were no creative juiced to torrent, I summarily dismissed out of hand as being absurd. Surely.

Anyway, the day following these desultory efforts, I resolved to open one of the bottles of Chianti we had brought back from our vacation and sip a few glasses while just noodling to try and reignite the spark. I also decided to change the strings (which incidentally would be this guitar’s first string change). The renewed growl and sparkle this lent the guitar caused a little thrill to run up the spine, for sure, and caused me to turn it around in my hands and admire it again as an object. This guitar is a splendid thing to behold. Then, I spent the next few hours sipping away and working out the middle bit to the song whose lyrics I’d done while on vacation. I think I got somewhere with this but I realised I would have to belt out a few songs for real to get back into the swing of things. Maybe this weekend…