[MMM#2]: Guitar Heroes

My son loves guitars. We spent most of yesterday finding guitar shops and secondhand stores where he could look at them. Ibanez. Gretsch. Telecaster. He knows them by shape. His favorite part of the guitar is the headstock. To him, they’re like fingerprints. Essential identifiers. He knows guitars like some people know birds, butterflies. That’s a reverse headstock, he tells me in Highland Music. Or George Harrison played a guitar like that. Or Keith Richards, St. Vincent. A kind-hearted old man with a clean-shaven head approaches us. It’s not clear to me if he works there or if he’s just a regular but he asks me if the boy likes guitars. I tell him yes. What’s your favorite guitar in here? he asks my son. My son grins and shrugs and says, All of them. After a few parlor tricks in which my son displays his peculiar breadth of guitar knowledge, the old man assures me my son will go far, do anything he wants to do. Meanwhile there is a band of young men from Tuscaloosa browsing too. They are literally a band, killing time before a gig tonight. We overhear them tell the store’s proprietor — also an old man, a bit grumpier, who peels and slowly eats a banana as he regales these boys with Southern rock lore — that they cover mostly Allman Brothers stuff, and Skynyrd. Never liked Skynyrd much. Hated that rebel flag shit, even back then. He too was a touring musician, back in the 60s and 70s. And, of course, a fan. Saw Hendrix in Tuscaloosa and Faces in Auburn (best damn rock-‘n’-roll show I ever saw). These young men circle around him and listen. Receiving something passed down. My son is (secretly) listening too (as I am). Later, when we’re talking about how deep the one young man’s voice was — I say he must be the singer with a voice like that — my son asks if I’m talking about the one who was surprised to learn Jimi Hendrix played in Tuscaloosa. Yes, I tell him. Amazed that he heard, registered, remembered an ambient throwaway like that. But of course it wasn’t a throwaway. It was a kinship. Old man, young man, little boy. A lineage. A particular fascination shared. I like music too but I feel somehow out of this loop. I don’t know who played what, and where, and when. Don’t even know the titles of all my favorite songs. My seven year old does. He tsks me. He’s not the singer, Dad. Certain, for some reason he won’t share. As if he’s 17 and not 7. My son will go far someday. I can’t go with him. What he loves is his.

[Micro = short. / Meta = writing conscious of itself as writing. / Micro-Meta Monday = musings, on writing / art / consciousness, appearing here on the last Monday of each month.]