The way these lessons go is this: for about twenty minutes, our infinitely patient instructor, Mr. Cory, a professional musician who plays weddings and other events when not teaching, goes over my mother’s open chords: good old D, G, A, and E. My mother, who does practice, wraps her fingers around the fretboard and makes a chord, strums the guitar tentatively, then looks at me and Mr. Cory for encouragement. We smile and she looks down again at the fretboard, shaping the next chord. Mr. Cory makes pleasant observations - “You are getting so much better!” - and my mother alternates between shy smiles and discouraged frowns.
But she motors on, because this has become one of the important events in her week and she does not want to disappoint either of us.
Mr. Cory then turns to me and says, “Now what are we working on today, Mr. Scott?” We both know that these lessons are not about me, but devoting the whole hour to my mother would likely make her head explode, and the time he spends with me gives her a chance to rest for a little bit. Plus, she tells me, like she did when I took piano lessons fifty years ago, she enjoys watching me play.
(In fact, after today’s lesson, she told me that she had been encouraged watching me struggle with a blues progression. “If you make mistakes, it makes me feel better about making mistakes myself,” she said.)
Mr. Cory and I work through some interesting techniques for about twenty minutes. I must say that I do enjoy this in the same way I like to talk to professional chefs, IT professionals, and garage mechanics: they have not only mastered their craft, which I greatly admire, but they have shortcuts for us laypeople.
(For example, I once spent some time in the kitchen at Brennan’s downtown during a chef’s table dinner my family arranged for me on Father’s Day, and I asked one of the sous chefs about the proper way to make a roux. My roux always takes a long time to get to the brick red you want for gumbo, but I knew there had to be a shortcut. The chef said that the roux they made was done in a hot second: the flour hits screaming hot fat and is rapidly whisked until the granules are properly toasted and then off the heat before turning into the dreaded black roux (unusable). He showed me, and sure enough, it was perfect roux in five minutes. But for the life of me (and this was before cell phone video was a thing), I cannot remember how he stopped the flour from continuing to cook after it rapidly hit its right color. Oh well. I am doomed to forty-five minute roux.)
The guitar is particularly suited for these kind of shortcuts. It is basically a musical abacus, every note on every string up and down the fretboard mathematically related to each other string and note, with dozens of different ways to play the same progression of notes. And like a good math proof, your goal is to find the shortest and easiest path to your destination.
Mr. Cory is my guitar Sherpa, patiently leading me up the musical mountain, finger by everlasting finger, a pick in each of our hands, unafraid to fall in a crevasse of bad notes because who cares? It is the journey that’s the fun part, isn’t it?
Today, as noted above, I struggle with a pretty easy blues progression, watching Mr. Cory effortlessly play the same line three different ways. I know, just as I do when I am lifting weights, that this is not about talent, it is about repetition, so I tell him, “I need an incentive to practice. If I get this lick right at the next lesson, I am going to treat myself to…”
I pause briefly, considering my audience, which includes my saintly mother. A number of rewards are rapidly considered and rejected. Finally, I reach for my lowest common denominator.
“…a cookie.”
Mr. Cory looks at me with pity. That’s what motivates you? he is clearly thinking. Sad.
My mother must have also thinking the same thing because she tries to come to my rescue. “Scott is a gourmet chef,” she says. “He makes such good food.”
Mr. Cory looks at me again, a professional musician teaching two elderly dilettantes how to make open chords, and he resets. “I’m sure he does,” he says, smiling.
Then it’s back to my mother for another twenty minutes, more or less, and then we wind it up and my mother hugs Mr. Cory at the end of every lesson. He seems genuinely touched each time by her affection and so am I.
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Lately, my Thursdays are slow in the morning - puzzles and a leisurely breakfast - then noon at the gym (another awful core day today), race home for lunch and a shower, then guitar lessons, then Mom time, and then it’s 5:30 or so, the day flying by.
Today, Mom time was a drive to her accountant to pick up her folder of tax materials (“I need it because I’m starting next year’s folder, Scott.”), then a visit to Home Depot for more flowers for her townhome (and tomato cages for my rapidly growing tomato plants), then Smoothie King for something sweet.
We call my sister who is pleased to visit with us. Happily married, enjoying her post-retirement work as a photographer‘s assistant, she seems to be in a state of contented equilibrium.
I can hear her husband talking in the background, but I cannot tell if they are in her car or in a bar. It doesn’t matter - she’s in her element either way.
I dropped Mom off and went home, suddenly exhausted. My plan to make blueberry muffins gets shelved and I sit down on the couch to read. We order in some food from Red Robin, and the evening passes uneventfully, but not unpleasantly.
Tomorrow: you know, I don’t have any plans. Maybe a long walk and mental preparation for next week’s election clerking, plus some deadlines coming up on legal matters. I have a feeling a tsunami is looming on the horizon. I will rest while I can.
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Random interesting picture (now that I can import pictures again):
This is me with the Cheese Days Ambassador in Monroe, Wisconsin in 2022. My law school buddy Scott (who I golfed with last week) lives there and invited me to stay with him during the biannual Cheese Days festival. I drove there from Texas and enjoyed beer, music, and cheese for four days before heading south to Missouri to visit my friend Ron and then to Arkansas for a music festival in Bentonville with my friend Glenn.
That may have been my favorite road trip of all time. Cheese Days is this year. Maybe one more time?
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