random thoughts: my old guitar

My old guitar.  Outtake from the book.  Photographed with Nikon D300, 60mm micro lens.

On Sunday, I decided to take out my old guitar, to shoot some images for the book.  I've had this guitar since I was about 11 years old -- I'd signed up for guitar lessons, and my father bought it for me to practice.  The lessons lasted only about 2 months, so I never really learned how to play.  But it's a beautiful guitar, and I've had it with me everywhere I've gone:  from middle school in Kingwood, Texas, to a convent high school in Trinidad, to College Station, Texas for university, back to (several different homes in) Houston, to London, again to Houston, to Trinidad, and back to Houston again.  We've been through a lot, this guitar and me.

The strange thing is, I'm not sure I can articulate what it is about this guitar that I cherish so.  I never taught myself more than the most rudimentary of chords, the guitar case is falling apart, and all it ever does is sit in dark closets wherever I happen to be living.  I'm not much of a packrat, and every move I've ever made always results in my purging my life of anything I don't currently use;  logic would therefore dictate that I'd have put this puppy up on Craigslist or Ebay and sold it a long time ago. 

But I could never sell it.  Maybe the reason it's so important to me is actually because I've had it for so long:  it's one of the few constants in my life over the past 30 years.  It's seen me through so many different stages; it's seen me evolve as I've grown up. 

And so, I keep it.  And regardless of what events may happen, where we might move, what changes might be ahead, I suspect my old guitar will be with me through it all.

Song: Hard time killing blues as performed by Chris Thomas King (from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack)