Broken Strings

In June, I broke a guitar string and because I didn’t have an extra one lying around or the money to buy new strings, I put my electric guitar in its case and haven’t touched it since. I’ve strummed the acoustic a few times in that time, but never for any extended lengths of time. I haven’t jammed or worked on new songs or played the typical go-through-the-motions warm up riffs. I’ve just stopped playing.

The longest I’ve gone without playing guitar was during junior year of high school. That hiatus began around early November and ended in late May, the entire length of my tenure working as a pizza maker at Nancy’s. Work and school consumed so much of my time that I never really went out on weekends or saw my friends in a social setting. I had a reason (or excuse) for not playing guitar: there just wasn’t enough time in the day. I’d have an hour between work and school, which I’d spend half watching TV and half watching the clock, agonizing how badly work would be that night. And after work, I’d have to complete my homework, or—depending on how awful the shift was—watch a movie in order to come down so I could fall asleep and do it all again the next day.

Back then, I didn’t look at playing guitar as a way to collect my thoughts, relax, or unwind. It was a chore, something that made the blues get bluer. It was after I had quit the job from Nancy’s, when I started hanging out with my friends—all of whom played guitar, especially when they were hanging out—again that I realized how far behind I had fallen in terms of playing ability. They were all better than me, and I felt this need to catch up. So I played constantly—even while watching TV or movies, which bugged the shit out of my little sister—and I got to the point where I could keep up with my friends.

While there was that competitive reasoning for sticking with guitar, I also really loved making music and playing in bands. The dream of being in a touring band, however, ended for me after college. It seemed like I had reached a plateau in my ability to play, like I was never going to get any better than I already was. I could barely write a song for shit, and everything I did write was pretty generic. I wasn’t breaking any new ground or rocking the foundations of preexisting musical genres. To put it simply: I wasn’t saying or playing anything that hadn’t already been done to death.

I haven’t come to that realization with writing stories yet, though I’ll likely reach that point eventually. But one of the ways I’m able to stew over ideas, phrasings, figuring out what I want to say or how I want to say it, is by picking up my electric guitar and playing scales or riffs or any other runs that I’ve retained in my muscle memory, so that I can focus on completing the piece of writing in front of me. I must have taken thousands of guitar breaks over the course of the last three years, while working on the stories in my thesis. It’s never failed.

This stretch of not playing guitar is the second longest I’ve had since I bought my first electric guitar in 7^th grade. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since I broke that string I haven’t finished a single short story, contributed any additional revisions to my collection, or broke any new ground on the novel I stopped working on almost two years ago. I’ve got my folder of start-stops, along with my rationale (excuses) as to why my writing has slowed, but thinking about all that brings the kind of discouragement that would make me slip even farther away from wanting to write. Definitely not a place I want to be.

So last week I ordered new guitar strings, and today they arrived in the mail. I unwound the remaining strings and wiped away the dust from between the pickups. The unstrung electric has a way of looking naked, incomplete. The strings give the guitar its voice; they’re what make it an instrument. Seeing them stretched over the fretboard and through the bridge is a visual reminder that this hunk of wood can be played and make music. Any time I change the strings, strip them from the guitar, I get this small flash of compassion for the thing, like seeing an animal with a missing limb. Sounds stupid, I know.

But I’m pleased to report that the new strings are on the guitar, it’s tuned up, and I’ve already gotten in some playing time. I was pretty surprised how much dexterity I had both lost and retained over the five-month hiatus. I thought I’d be worse at some scales and better with pull-offs and hammer-ons, which have frustrated me today since there has been some noticeable atrophy in my left ring and pinkie fingers. It’s going to take some time to get fully back on track; I’ve just got to keep at it.