Music is when a person is asked to describe emotions. The guitar is the vessel for which any person, musician or not, is allowed to express themselves: they might strum, pick, and pluck; they may hammer-on and pull-off; they can wrestle and vibrate its strings about the fretboard; they will welcome its resonant reverberation, allowing it to shake their soul.

While playing, this vacuous yet beautiful transition takes place. Words become useless, silence proves invaluable, and every thought ceases except for the very next note, emotion, color, and unphonetic expression.  You hear it in Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” and Gilmour’s “Comfortably Numb”; you see it in Picasso’s The Old Guitarist and Gris’s Harlequin with a Guitar.

With one hand perched atop its strings and the other wrapped around its neck, truth can be performed — sonorous and simple, perfect and imperfect.