Late last year I was poking around my cluttered spare room and I came across a sorry sight. Betty, my Ibanez three quarter size electric guitar literally collecting dust in the corner of the room. She was sitting there quite forlornly, keeping vigil on her guitar stand. I lifted up the towel that I had thrown over her a few years ago in a futile attempt to keep the dust off her and winced a bit. She was neglected, out of tune with a thick layer of dust on her and yet, her sleek black basswood body with its sparkle finish and chrome pickups beckoned me.
I flicked the towel back down. Nah, I thought, she’s out of tune and I’ve lost my callouses, I can’t play her anymore. But deep down I knew I wouldn’t touch her because I was still too intimidated by her to try learning again how to play her. I tried once and I got as far as learning Dimmu Borgir’s "Hunnerkongens sorgsvarte ferd over steppene" ("The Hunnic King's Sorrow Black Journey Across the Steppes") and half a blues song before packing it in, frustrated by my clumsiness and lack of flow on the fretboard.
Music and me go way back. My love for music was fostered by my blind music teacher in my primary school. I can still recall the sunlight of the music room, looking at the dust motes dancing around the slightly musty smelling room. I also recall my teacher’s Labrador Retriever guide dog sleeping quietly under her desk. My music teacher welcomed me into the music room and pushed me at every turn from learning how to sight read music to becoming better at playing the recorder and tenor recorder. She insisted I join the school band to perform at the end of year assemblies without trying out for a place because she was so convinced I had something worth nurturing.
At the end of my time at school, when I was leaving the joyful and happy confines of primary school to enter the larger and scarier world of high school, my music teacher asked me which high school I was going to. When I answered that I would be going to a school that specialised in languages which also had strong links to one of the better universities in my home state she expressed sadness that I wouldn’t be going to a music school. I think she might have left me with words of encouragement to keep playing music.
Throughout the years I tinkered a bit with music, I bought a keyboard piano and pecked at that a little but mostly music fell off my radar. It was something I once did as a child but nevertheless, my music teacher’s faith in me has stayed with me all these years. That is, until I tried to learn electric guitar. My first stab at learning guitar was a $60 full size electric guitar I bought at a pawn shop. My friend’s boyfriend gave me a lesson, told me I was okay at it and I remember dragging that guitar with me when I moved out of home. Somewhere along the way after numerous moves, it disappeared.
My next attempt at learning guitar was an acoustic half size that might have been a Cordoba C1M ½. I remember it being a tepid learning experience, I felt the fretboard was too thick for my small hands and I couldn’t move comfortably or freely on it. But one thing I distinctly remember feeling was how not right it felt. While I plucked at the Cordoba's nylon strings, in my soul, in my heart I craved metal. Work and life eventually pushed my half hearted attempts at learning guitar to the periphery. Eventually, B lugged the guitar at my behest to the pawn shop so we could declutter while also raising some much needed cash at that time.
Several years later after selling my acoustic guitar, a shocking and mind blowing encounter with Code Orange’s “Last Ones Left” opened the floodgates of my past. Memories of the hours spent in my young adult years where I basically wrecked my hearing courtesy of Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, Hole, Nirvana, Pantera and Slayer came roaring back. As Code Orange raged in my ear drums I suddenly felt like I had come home. Something pure and wonderful was surging through my blood again. In the intervening years of adult life and responsibilities I had forgotten that feeling. That rage, that adrenalin, that unbridled aggression. It was the rush and joy of metal.
Feeling high on the intoxication of reuniting with my old metal self, I put up only feeble resistance to the urge to buy another guitar. Yes, another guitar. I caved almost instantly to my impulsiveness and went online and bought an Ibanez GRGM21 BKN Mikro ¾ size electric guitar in Black Night. I called her Betty in tribute to Spiderbait’s wonderfully raucous cover of Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter “Black Betty”.
From day one Betty intimidated me. I was scared of breaking her strings, of putting fingerprints on her, of touching her. She glittered cold, black and unapproachable. I tried so hard to get comfortable with her. I spent hours playing scales, trying to learn songs. I wanted so very much to bond with her and for her bond with me. I wanted to become one with my guitar, for her to feel intuitive to me and while there were moments of rapture and joy playing her, for the most part it was just really hard, unrewarding work. It was a grind that I seemed to not be getting better at.
Everything that I had thought about myself and music peeled away like an onion skin, leaving me feeling strangely fraudulent and fake. I could not connect with my guitar. All the riffs I yearned to play felt hopelessly out of reach. I kept telling myself my hands are too small, my fingers are too chubby and stubby. I can’t play. I will never be able to play and eventually I believed this and Betty slowly but surely stopped being something that was part of my daily life and routine. At some stage she was quietly moved to the corner and a towel thrown over her.
But seeing her late last year triggered that old yearning. I looked at her sparkles, her glossy black paint and her harsh metal strings. Even as I dismissed trying to learn guitar again something in the back of my mind whispered, one day. Tonight was that day. I chucked off the towel, dusted her off and hauled her into my lap. I dug out my old scale exercises and tried to remember how to read music again. For my first session I did my scale exercise without even tuning her. I just wanted to feel the bite of the metal strings underneath my fingertips and her familiar weight on my lap.
For my second session, I tuned her and then rooted around the spare room until I found my headphone amp and then it became really fun as the reverb and high gain turned the scale exercises into something enjoyable. I sat on my living room couch playing scales, relishing hearing Betty again. I thought fuck what I used to think, your hands and fingers are fine and I gripped the fretboard and started moving freely on it, willing my mind to forget form and function, allowing my fingers to just move. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t sound clean or that my technique was shit. What mattered was moving up and down that fretboard and moving across those six steel strings, soaking up the steely reverb and high gain.
I think it might be different now because I’m different now. I've stopped telling myself stories about what I think I am or should be. I hope Betty and I have some ways to go yet and that our story will have a happy ending. For all you guitar heroes out there, keep trying. I am and I reckon we can all shred one day.
