Muscle Memories

I've just picked up the guitar again for, essentially, the first time in a decade.

There are lots of reasons why this is the case.

They are not pretty reasons.

I’m not the first person to go through something like that.

I won’t be the last.

It was an experience that stripped me of my agency, my voice and my connection to the world.

It removed all of my certainties, one by one: that people are generally good, that people are generally kind, and everything generally turns out okay in the end.

One thing that happens in situations like this is the removal of any pleasure you felt in doing everyday things and everyday hobbies. Right after they’ve removed your escape routes and made sure you won’t talk, they start taking away the things that make you you.

Like playing the guitar.

'Shut up. Shut the fxxx up. Stop making that horrible noise.'

I grew up loving that horrible noise.

I learned to play because I wanted to make that horrible noise.

I now feel disconnected from it.

The guitar now reminds me of who I was.

In doing so, it reminds me of what I've lost - and where I am now.

It reminds me of being told to shut the fxxx up.

It reminds me of being scared and intimidated.

So starting to play again is me trying to reclaim something of myself.

It hasn't been a lot of fun so far.

It's like being a former professional athlete being asked to run a marathon again after ten years inactivity.

Fingers that used to dance across the fretboard have been robbed of their fluency as well as their calluses and now struggle to form basic chords. The effortless connections that used to exist between ears, brain and hands have rusted and decayed after nearly a decade without serious use. Note choices are poor. Phrasing is hesitant. Flow is non-existent.

My current abilities remind me that any skill I had took years of diligent work and discipline to achieve.

And now it's gone.

Will anything come back?

Hard to tell.

Something will come back - if I keep going - but not what once was.

That will be the hardest thing to accept.

Learning to play again has illuminated how much of music is about the mechanics.

It's funny how in most discussions about any artistic practice, the fact that it's time and effort before we get to sublimity and expression is rarely mentioned.

You don't go through the mechanics to get to the music.

From the physical capacity and ability to play to the realities of writing, recording, performing … they're everything.

You literally can't make a sound without them.

You get to the music through the mechanics.

So if you're working on mechanics, you're also already working on music.

In simply getting my fingers moving again, music is already starting to come out.

I might be frustrated by my abilities now compared to what they were, but there is something of the sense of coming home in the feel of wood and wire under my fingertips again; in the tension and release of a given plucked string; in this little box of air resonating and responding to the choices my fumbling fingers make, driven by my ear and my brain.

There is also something profoundly meditative in working solely on a given aspect of technique. Focusing on one particular element, repeating the same pattern over and over, refining a particular nuance is incredibly satisfying.

It has the same effect as an athlete working specifically on one technique - over and over. The devilling of the detail organically contributes to the development of the whole.

Something else is also emerging.

Memories and emotions.

As a teenager I read a teenager's novel where one of the characters suffered a severe emotionally traumatic event.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - you know, the one Douglas Adams wrote with the plot, but a plot that could only have been released in the Eighties?

Yeah, that one.

A musician, the novel described this character’s capacity to lock away pain simply by the act of playing their instrument.

Emotionally distraught at the start of a given piece, by the time they reached its end, they would be calm and centred again.

However, playing the same piece again would unlock the unprocessed emotion and it would all flood out.

A survival mechanism, locking their pain away in the music allowed the character to focus on the here and now.

I always thought that this was fanciful.

I always thought that it had been written by someone who loved music but who had no idea how it worked and how it felt to play it.

But ...

In playing again themes are quite naturally and organically developing.

Some of them were first written at a stressful and traumatic time.

Playing the guitar occasionally at night, a sock stuffed between the strings and the soundboard, created a brief safe space in a difficult situation.

Playing the guitar now reminds me of those moments - and being beaten up.

Revisiting things I wrote in that dark place has unlocked a lot of the pain and sadness and fear that we felt back then.

I locked them away then so that I could function.

I hope now I am releasing them so I can.

©℗ A. I. Jackson

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The first Origin(al) Stories Journal was a blog launched to track the writing and recording of the Northumbria album. You can read about the thought processes behind that here.

Following the launch of The Landing Stage website, I’ve decided to continue with the Origin(al) Stories posts.

The Landing Stage showcases some of the things I do.

The Origin(al) Stories posts show some of the thoughts and processes and activities that go into those acts of doing.

Drawn from my personal diaries and journals, the posts might often seem unconnected, elliptical and fragmentary.

This is because the Origin(al) Stories blog doesn’t offer the definitive conclusions, hacks, lists or ‘how to …’ advice beloved of Youtube gurus, bro-science and self-help manuals.

This is because there’s no one road through the forest, no one route to the top of the mountain, no one path to where you want to be and what you want to do.

The Origin(al) stories only shows how I’ve found a path through to doing something.

The path always has to give you as much as the destination.

They are, as I noted in the original post about it, postcards from the journey. Snapshots of work in progress - which is what all lives and endeavours are.

If you’ve liked an Origin(al) Stories post, or it’s helped you with something you’re doing in some way, please share it to your socials, and give credit. All content on this website is copyrighted and attributable.

If you’d like to listen to Northumbria, download it here.

If you’d like to listen to Alnwyck Jameson Badger, download it here.

If you’d like to listen to Broken Oars Podcast, download it here.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day. Tell the people you love that you love them. Be a positive force.