Fields of Flowers

There has been a guitar sitting in my house for quite some time now. About two weeks ago I decided to do something about it. I started playing it again. I use the word “again” because years ago I kind of taught myself a few chords and played a little. I was never very good and had no confidence to play in front of people. But I did have enough basic knowledge and ability to purchase and own a guitar. So I did that. After a while I grew frustrated with my lack of progress as a great guitar player and lost interest in playing.

About that same time my son Patrick, then a teenager, picked it up. He was a natural and quickly figured out the secrets to the instrument that I could never conquer. He was good enough to write some songs and perform at open mike nights around town. His singing voice was much different from the way he spoke and it was interesting to hear him play and sing. His recent living excursions in New York City and now Savannah, GA have left him without either extra space for a guitar or apparently the desire to play it. So my old guitar, which he inherited, has been lying around my house for several months. It had been unused but always visible and many times when walking past it I have been tempted to pick it up.

There were three recent events that inspired me to start playing again. On July 8 one of my favorite bands, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, released a new recording. Actually it was a very old recording of a concert tour they did in 1974 but released now for the first time. It has 40 songs on it plus a DVD video of eight songs. I was inspired by the sheer talent those guys had and the way they played each other’s songs in that group setting. I had heard the songs before but not with the passion and enthusiasm I heard them when I listened to the new/old recording. And to see the video of those eight songs took me right back to that year when I saw them perform in Cleveland during that tour. Hard to believe that all happened 40 years ago and hard to rationalize where all that time went. And why I was waiting all those years to play guitar again.

One of my frustrations when I played before was my lack of ability to properly tune my guitar. As all instruments do, my guitar would lose its proper tuning and I just did not have an ear for correcting that. So I would ask people to help me or take it to a music store and ask them to do it. Eventually, I was able to purchase a battery operated tuner which worked to a certain degree. When I decided to pick up my guitar again, I immediately considered my previous tuning dilemma and started to search for the electronic tuner. Of course I had no idea where it might be and did what I should have done in the first place: Look for a guitar tuning app for my iPhone and iPad. I found several and installed what looked like the best one and my tuning problem is no longer a problem. I simply bring up the app, hit one string at a time and turn the peg until the app screen shows green and I am in tune. I am always in tune.

My third inspiration is either a woman or myself. Or more likely, a combination of the two. Girls like guitar players and they like singers and although I am neither of those things, I am suddenly not afraid to try. When I played before, nobody was really interested in hearing me and I wasn’t very interested in being heard. But in this incarnation of me, I am not only able to play and sing for someone but I am actually eager to do so. It’s not like I think I’m any good either. I have just started to get calluses back on my fingertips and while playing, I make lots of mistakes and sometimes forget the words. I don’t care though and I don’t think my audience does either.

So an interesting thing happened to me just a few mornings ago. I was still in my first cup of coffee when I grabbed my guitar and started strumming a few random chords. I had these words come out that started with “I’m seeing things through her eyes …” then some other words and I started writing things down and more words happened and I wrote those down too. A couple of hours later I had enough to call it a song and I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I have heard about writers being gifted with streams of creativity out of nowhere. Some call it the muse. Whatever it was, it happened to me that day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not signing a recording contract and what came out of me that morning is not that good. But I don’t care about that because it’s mine and it’s exactly what I wanted a certain someone to hear. That evening I took my guitar to her house and played her “Fields of Flowers” and she loved it. I mean LOVED it. And even though I was pretty nervous and made a bunch of mistakes while playing it, I loved singing it to her. And as if that wasn’t enough, I made a video of me playing the song and posted it online so she could watch it and also just because I could.

I have never done that before for anybody. None of it. Part of the new me? Discovery? I don’t know. Some things are just so easy for me now. Things that would have been have challenging before just seem so natural now. Things that seemed so far away, so unreachable are now at my fingertips. Things nobody was interested in suddenly have meaning. And it’s all just so much fun.

Fields of Flowers from Rob Jones on Vimeo.

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