September 26, 2017

Words don’t come. Mind cluttered with choices, so no place to settle. Hands do my translations now, the left a calloused tiller of soil, the right another kind of expert: a sprightly dabbler in patterns and rhythms. I don’t know how either of them do their jobs, and in fact I try not to know. My hands work best unsupervised. I merely turn them loose, then frown or nod at the choices they make. Luckily, we share the same ear, so mind and hands always agree. And through this everyday practice, this playful trial and error, this harnessing of serendipity, the guitarist (all of me combined) makes progress. It’s a game of letting go, a trick of trusting a bodily intelligence my mind can only squint at, and I find myself loving it more, I suppose, than would make sense to most people.