Playing On

 

Moreover, in his old age he learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment.

                                                                        Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

Like Socrates, I see no absurdity in taking up the guitar in old age. Not necessarily to learn or to accomplish something “new.” Certainly not to master the instrument sufficiently to play to an audience—heavens, no! (Performance anxiety, and I don’t think I’d get anywhere near the ten thousand practice hours necessary for minimal expertise.) Not really playing as a hobby, either, quite, to pass time in my retirement, though it will do that, mark time and even keep it. Nor as some AARP-recommended cognitive aid to stave off dementia. Rather, I strum and pluck about in hopes that music—that ineffable vibe—reveal something about itself to me, particularly my own generation’s popular music, which was dominated by the guitar. And reveal something perhaps about my self and my sad song preferences.

Photo credit: K. Sylvie Moon

Just as live music provides a thicker experience than recorded music, striking a chord as opposed to hearing or
watching a chord played live, crafting that sound, alone, at home, connects one tactilely and kinetically to this great acoustic mystery of life in a post-rock and roll generation, a rhythm and blues universe: how does sound do that? Enchant? Neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists, even musicologists, last I looked, don’t have a very good answer to this question, partial at best, and I have my doubts that it can be explained in language in any but the most general terms. Still, one must ask, and it is best researched manually, at the fingertips in a single subject study. Which, consider me now doing.

Among my early findings is that my lifescore, I think, has something to do with A minor, maybe the key, definitely the chord, which shows up in every song in my top ten, or almost every, though never in the first position, always shifted to, from almost everywhere else on the fretboard, melancholonizing all, more than just a bit, to the very edge of despondence, yet not despair. Hammering down on the second string.  

A Poke in the Eye

I learned this week that while not technically macular degeneration, my visual malady, retinal edema, will get progressively worse unless I begin a series of eye injections. Injections . . . into one’s eye, in this case, my right eye. A series thereof, lasting “several years or even for life.” The idea of having a needle inserted in one’s eye, and not just once but routinely, focuses attention on the aging body and its maintenance. (A brother just replaced his hip, his second.) Such maintenance cannot be cheap, and while I can appreciate, at least in the abstract, the high value of vision, I’m not sure I’m worth it. And this is not low self-esteem or false modesty speaking. When do we become an undue burden on our system and our loved ones? We’re always a burden, sure, but when do we become undue?

Okay, maybe not yet. But the question will remain open.