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Category: Articles
0 Guitar after 50: When You Feel Like a “Fernandosaur”
Featured in the August 2014, Minnesota Guitar Society news letter:
I love my “Fernandosaur” T-shirt. It came free with a MGS sponsorship. Although I’m four years younger than Fernando Sor when he died at age 61, sometimes I feel like a dinosaur. The t-shirt reminds me that even T-Rex has value. Ask any seven-year-old.
And speaking of seven-year-olds: two years ago when I started studying classical guitar again after 25 years in “hibernation”, my first teacher quipped: “There are seven-year-olds who are better than we will ever be.” I thought about that for a long time.
With that bug in my ear, an imaginary “seven-year-old” sometimes visits my basement studio. He sits there watching me practice and smiling; I smile back. Hanging on the wall next to my imagined observer is a wooden panel painted with all capital letters:
LIFE IS NOT A RACE, BUT INDEED A JOURNEY. BE HONEST. WORK HARD. BE CHOOSY. SAY “THANK YOU”, “I LOVE YOU”, AND “GREAT JOB” TO SOMEONE EACH DAY. LET YOUR HANDSHAKE MEAN MORE THAN PEN AND PAPER. DREAMING DOES MATTER. IT ALLOWS YOU TO BECOME THAT WHICH YOU ASPIRE TO. APPRECIATE THE LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE AND ENJOY THEM. SOME OF THE BEST THINGS REALLY ARE FREE. DO NOT WORRY, TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF – PLAN FOR LONGEVITY.
Plan for longevity! You know, when the first home video recorders started showing up in the late 60’s Andrés Segovia was already in his late 70’s. Young people comment that in those grainy YouTube videos he looks awful. Like one foot is already in the grave. Nevertheless, Segovia performed until the time of his heart attack at age 94, just days before a scheduled recital at Carnegie Hall.
Perhaps you’ve seen the Christopher Nupen production, “Andrés Segovia in Portrait”? The CD is available on Amazon.com. In this colorful retrospective you can observe Segovia’s masterful technique: how the left-hand fingers are always relaxed, always curved. They never stray more than a breath from the fretboard. You see the chubby right hand fingers move faster than video itself. If you press the pause button the still frame shows little more than a blur.
One thing I was surprised to notice in the documentary. While strolling along a shady lane in Granada, Andrés is wearing bedroom slippers. Elderly people, especially if they are over weight, can suffer from reduced circulation in the feet and legs leading to swelling and edema. This makes it painful or impossible to wear normal street shoes. So at all ages, and at all levels of accomplishment, we’re reminded that healthy lifestyle can extend not only longevity but the enjoyment of our days.
Most readers of this newsletter would agree that practicing, playing and sometimes performing beautiful music has intrinsic value that transcends any outward reward or recognition. When a tree falls alone in a forest, with no one to hear it, is there sound? That question is up to the philosophers. But when I practice alone in my basement, I believe that ministering angels swirl about the room, cheering me on to that next difficult measure—measure after measure—until the entire piece finally begins to flow. There is no better cure for the “Fernandosaur” blues.
