The Guitar was....Instrumental





Excerpt from Ballad, Chapter 9: “Passions and Process Addictions”:

It was early spring,  I was about four months sober, and I started spending quality time with my guitar. I began with the stuff from my past: Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, and the Beatles. I had been hitting my meetings like clockwork and incorporating some of my AA teachings into my practice sessions: Accepting that I kind of suck. Accepting that I really only have a handle on the open chords, and still struggle with bar chords. Accepting that my fingers are painfully sore. Accepting that the guitar that I own is badly warped and horribly out of tune from years of sitting in a dark basement and humid garage.

Joe, try this on for size: Accept with gratitude that you are alive, sober, and have the luxury to strum a guitar, because you have a good friend who let you move in with him rent-free while you try to piece your life back together. Accept that you can learn song after song in his comfortable townhouse with his fully stocked refrigerator. You can practice while keeping yourself faced away from the front window so when the yellow school buses pass and stop to drop off children after school, you don’t have to look.

And play I did. I found myself picking up songs....

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