Here comes another one...here it comes again...

Music.

It sometimes seems that a large chunk of my early education was devoted to making me hate things that should be fun. Physical Education classes in school only served to emphasise my physical ineptness, making me an easy target for ridicule and bullying. This only made me hate sports and physical activity more.
With music I received the standard public school sprinkling of rudimentary knowledge, but it was never done in a way I could really understand. The rote “4/4 time means four beats to the bar, and the quarter note gets one beat” was easy enough to memorize, but lacked real intuitive meaning. After all, what exactly is a beat? Is it every second, 2 seconds? It was never defined. Why four in a bar? Why not eight? Forty-Seven? What is the purpose of this bar thing anyway? The whole thing seemed pretty arbitrary, and still does in some ways.
My mother had been very musical, apparently, having played piano and been a music teacher or something. So I was expected to play piano as well, whether I liked it or not. My grandmother seemed to be the one pushing this, and she believed you could simply be ordered to have certain opinions and feelings. So I would like it and that was that. They sent me to a music teacher. Somehow they found the ideal example of the stereotypical piano teacher: elderly, thin, hawk faced, humourless, drab. Apparently music was a serious business and enjoyment or fun were not to be tolerated. So I again learned by rote and memorization without any real understanding. I played bland, uninteresting tunes, pressing the keys in the correct patterns to make the required noises. But it wasn’t really music; it never meant anything more than a series of notes. I never heard anything in these pieces that created any emotion or feeling (other than dread at having to plink out another one). Eventually I was able to get my Dad to allow me to quit.
And we never had much music in the house when I was growing up. Occasionally I might try playing one of my mother’s old records, but they didn’t really do much for me. Or perhaps on the odd rainy Sunday the stereo would be turned on to some inoffensive easy listening or classical station. There was never any ‘modern’ music around; certainly no rock or its various offshoots. For a while I even picked up an attitude that rock and such were garbage, but to be honest, I think this was just a defence for speaking to other kids about music that I knew nothing about.
Eventually , in the late 70’s /early 80’s I started to surreptitiously listen to more interesting stuff on the radio, like the local university station which played more alternative stuff like Depeche Mode, Talking Heads and the like. I just knew I liked it. And while my contemporaries claimed to like Kiss, I preferred Blondie (Debbie Harry was hot back then!) But I never felt that I could reveal my musical tastes at home. I always felt that I would be mocked (Grandmother), or they would be disappointed and call it garbage. So, I’d semi-secretly listen to tapes of The Police, or Dire Straits, and lots of other stuff on the radio.
After my father died and I was on my own, I started to listen to a wider variety. With the help of some musically inclined friends, I was able to explore a bit more and start a decent CD collection. I accumulated stuff from various genres including standard rock, pop, new wave, punk, industrial, surf, Madchester, Britpop, classical, prog rock, blues, jazz, techno/electronica and a few others. I hate county (99% of it, anyway), and most rap/hiphop type stuff.
Around 1989 I got the crazy idea that I’d like to play music myself. This time I would choose the instrument and I would choose the music. I would do it for my own enjoyment and because I wanted to do it. So I purchased a basic electric guitar, amp, and associated other bits, and started taking lessons. Being young and easily distracted, and in university at that time, I didn’t put in as much time and effort I perhaps I should, but I picked up a few things, and could pick out a few tunes and licks with fair proficiency. Later on I upgraded my axe to a proper noisemaker: a Fender American Standard Stratocaster, in 3 colour sunburst. I liked the feeling of just holding it.
Well, the metaphorical calendar pages fell off the wall, and around 1994 or 1995 we were very short on money. In order to pay the bills I pawned my beloved Strat. A feeling of failure sat heavy in my guts when I did that. That feeling faded over the years since, but never completely disappeared.
Here I am 15 years later and I’ve finally taken the leap back into the world of personally making music. With much less resistance than I had anticipated, the spousal unit let me purchase a new six-string electric twanger. It’s another Stratocaster, an American Special in two colour sunburst. This is a new model just starting this year. And I like it! It has an alder body with a glossy urethane coat that blends from a tan/yellow stain at the center to near-black on the edges, with the wood grain showing through the tan. It has a maple neck and fretboard, with a larger headstock than my old one. And three single coil Texas Special pickups. Again, I just like to hold the thing.
As far as my ability to play the thing, I seem to have forgotten almost everything. However, now that I’m older, I have the patience to learn it properly. I’m working on learning to read standard music notation (the little black dots), instead of the tablature I had used before. I’m currently following a course in a book/DVD-Rom package, and taking my time to make sure I really get it. Unfortunately I’m stuck on a terrible work schedule for the next 6 weeks that doesn’t give me much time to practice. But this won't last forever. A couple more months and I'll be able do dedicate more time.