When a Thing Is More Than a Thing.

At around two o’clock this morning I was in my bedroom preparing to go to bed when I heard a loud noise somewhere in the house. It was both metallic and hollow and accompanied by a scraping sound. I investigated and discovered the source.

My Spanish guitar, which normally rests against the wall next to the TV in my living room, was lying on its face with the saddle (that’s the wooden piece behind the sound hole to which the bottom ends of the strings are attached) disconnected from the body of the instrument. Evidently age had taken its toll, and the powerful glue which holds the saddle in place had finally weakened and given up the ghost. I’m sure it could be repaired, but it would have to be done by an expert and would cost far more than the guitar is worth. It is now destined for the council tip.

In a way it matters little since I haven’t played it for some years (not, I think, since the time when I sat out in the summer garden and serenaded a young rabbit with my version of Mr Tambourine Man, a fact I recall mentioning on this blog.) And ever since I moved away from the teenage gang and adopted a regular domestic lifestyle, I’ve only ever played it for my own amusement anyway (the rabbit didn’t seem particularly amused; in fact, the rabbit didn’t even seem to notice.)

But it was an old friend which had been with me since my twenties, through all the ups and downs which the vicissitudes of life saw fit to throw at me. It was the third guitar I’d had since I began learning to strum and ripple pick at around the age of 15. I was a million miles from being an accomplished guitarist, but what little I could do I did well. And here’s the point:

Over the past few years, two phenomena seem to have dominated my life:

1. Losing things that were important to me (like a kidney for example.)

2. Experiencing things for the first time. In this case, it’s the first time I haven’t had a guitar since I was a callow youth sitting aimlessly in my bedroom listening to Bob Dylan songs and Irish folk music. The me I was then bore little or no comparison with the person who was soon to begin the big search for meaning and the Holy Grail.

I can’t honestly say that I’m going to miss it because I probably won’t, but I do feel a sense of loss out of all proportion to the material reality of a hollow piece of wood with some bits of wire attached. And it won’t be easy to cast an old friend into a large skip on its way to being crushed and discarded with countless other bits of inconsequential detritus.