How It All Began - 3

When it turned out that I was not to be the Garfunkel to Donx's Simon, I didn't even consider stopping. It were as if it were only natural that I now carried the guitar everywhere; that I spent hours each day practicing; that I wrote my own songs. I had always loved writing, had always been noticed for it. Even before I played music, I wrote songs. For at least six years before I picked up a guitar. (Sure, they were juvenile and obvious, but educated and experienced hindsight has a way of sometimes murdering the beauty and truth seen in youth.)

After I started playing, my writing talent naturally grew into songwriting, fueled by my desire. It was almost as if I had been waiting, and this was the permission I needed to delve 100% into music. I went from having no guitar -- and it's hard for me to believe there was a time when I didn't have this central focus, this obsession, this love -- to having one around always, and practicing about six hours a day.

And I got better at playing in impressive leaps and bounds. I may have waited a while to begin, but once I did, it was a rather steep climb. I still had no control over my voice, but those who heard my guitar could not believe that I had only been playing for four months. That's the kind of devotion I had for it. I wanted to play so bad that I put every second of spare time into it. I practiced over and over and over. I started with the same kind of merciless determination that I still access today. Then, I was so excited, I didn't need rest. Now, I do. But I also have over a decade of practice behind me.

Aside from the guitar I gave away at ten, the first guitar I remember owning was given to me by my father, Juan Felipe -- always known to me simply as Papi. He gave me that guitar when I was about 19 or 20 and staying with him in Iowa. That was the first time I made that long trip across highway 80 to visit him in the midwest. The next time was when Vance and Rachel and I drove there in the beatup Chevette.

 

 

The guitar was 16 years old, and had a hole knocked into the back of it. As if a boot, or a signpost, had just smashed into it one night. It was a classical guitar, so I had to learn to fingerpick first (nylon strings). And I had to learn on the wide, concave neck that is found on nylon-string guitars. And so I did. I had just met my father that year, and when I went to visit him in the summer, he offered to buy me lessons. And I tried one. This was after playing for a few months. I found the teacher boring, and possessed of a dull, "professional" energy that would only slow me down. I don't remember taking anything of worth from that "lesson." It was to be my one and only.

I had already written two songs, Should I stay or should I go? and another, which I don't remember the name of. Should I Stay or Should I Go? was not, contrary to what you may think, a bouncy song fashioned after the Clash's song of the same title (which I love, by the way). It's a question of whether or not to commit suicide, and it was in the key of A minor.

I think that song became the model for many other suicidal songs in the key of A minor. And for a while, all my songs were either in the key of E minor or A minor. And they were all fingerpicked, too! I didn't have a steel-string for years, and so all my songs were written to a fingerpicked melody. I didn't learn strumming, and I didn't learn to use a pick for years to come. First, I simply learned to feel the strings, where they were, and to learn how to pick a pattern to the beat. All my songs were moody, they were all lugubrious, and they were all angsty.

 

One of the only things I can remember my father teaching me was how to fingerpick a certain pattern. He taught me this when I was 19. Taking note of my burgeoning interest in guitar, he demonstrated it and suggested that I play it over and over and over, all day. He told me to mute the strings if I happened to be in a position where making sound would not be ideal. Even if I were sitting in front of the TV, he said, keep picking it over and over and over. And I did just that. And it worked. That was my first fingerpicking pattern, and later I added more, but for a while, any song I fingerpicked had that same pattern. And I was exquisitely pleased to be able to pick it out with the quickness. This is the picking pattern found all over the seminal collection of songs, Like it Never Used To -- a tape I recorded, when I was 19, by sitting in front of a boombox and pushing Record.

 

Soon, the living arrangement I had with my newly-met father disintegrated. It seemed too much time had passed: about 20 years since we had been more than strangers. I couldn't really hang with this character trying to guide me, or shape me at all. I rather resented it. And he didn't really appreciate the drama which seemed to follow me everywhere. I can't say I blame him. I guess I'd just gotten used to it.

I left Iowa City, and came back to New York.

Somewhere down the line, I ended up living with my girlfriend in Pennsylvania, just over the state line. Me and L____ had been on and off, for about three years. I really can't even remember what happened in what order, sometimes. After enough tornado, you take your eyes off the window. I've done my best to untangle the chaotic events of the past, but that only goes so far, with so many stories. Either way, I was still banging away on the old classical guitar, and had begun jamming with a few friends.

One, Roger, was the young, longhair poet/frontman/singer type. A kind of Jim Morrison wannabe. With Sebastian Bach undertones. (I don't mean the classical composer.) We shared lead vocals and songwriting; I played guitar, he stood and delivered his lyrics in his best tribute to the Lizard King. (Roger was a very big, ahem, Doors fan.) We were both just beginning and having a lot of fun. Roger would usually deliver his part of the lyric in a spoken voice, and to break it up, I would come in and deliver the chorus. It proved to be a nice blend, actually. And I would fashion songs for this purpose. Later, I realized I could do all voices myself, anyway. Why contend with personality or...girls that would travel between bandmembers.

The last member of our little trio was Rob, 29. A good fella, as far as I remember. I have very fond memories of him. He was a sincere and kind and well-bearded man. Rob was our strong guitar, and Roger and I had just begun to enlist his backup vocals when the whole band dissolved. Well. When I dissolved it by splitting to Iowa, to be exact.

We called ourselves Halfbreed, in honor of what Roger and I believed was a common bond, our feelings of internal conflict, and being made from mixed races. I guess his were White and Native American, although to my memory he looked very White. He did wear moccasin boots, however.

I still have the tape somewhere.

It's interesting to listen to only in the historic sense. Although some friends were very into the music, from the start. Owen O' Neill was one. (Owen told me this one reminded him of Lou Reed in the beginning. How? I think it was that they vocals were kind of spoken, and gradually built up to singing. We did not do heroin.) He would bring the Halfbreed tape to work, play it there. Owen was very important to me in those days. The songs, as best I can remember, were Rather Be Me, Rearranged, Formicary, Time to Feed the Fly, God Save the Children, and War, Pt. II. (In case you're wondering, Roger's contribution to these were the lyrics for God Save The Children, and shared vocals on the others, except Rearranged, which I sang alone. There may have been others songs, but I cannot remember them, if so.)

So in those days, I was very excited by this new musical finding. and not very excited about my relationship with a girl I had been with since I was 16 or 17.

L____ and I had met, like a million others, because we had certain overwhelming and transient needs that the other person filled beautifully for a while, but eventually could not keep satisfying, as at heart, the bond was not long-lasting. I can think of a number of beautiful things about her, but really, we simply were not the right type of people to make a couple. We are extremely different in some very important ways. As is the case with these kinds of pairings, in the beginning it was fantastic. But it did not stay that way.

What went wrong with our relationship was characterized perfectly by one epiphanous moment in a trailer in Milford, Pennsylvania. It hit me one evening when I was fingerpicking my guitar in the bedroom -- I still hadn't learned to strum yet -- and she asked me to shut the door to the bedroom, because her television show was being interrupted all the way out in the livingroom. Which was down the hall.

But nevermind the physical space. And nevermind the rationality or irrationality of it. I knew, when I got up and shut myself into the bedroom, that something was wrong. And perhaps you could have this same scene happen in a different relationship and mean nothing at all. But there and then, I knew that door was our love, and that our song was over.

We did end, soon after. And sadly enough, our once one-year-old son has since nearly grown into a man, and most of it without me*. His is the wailing voice in the song Forever, on the album Imaginary Friend.