Ode to My Guitar

Welp, that was a hiatus I didn't mean to take.  Remember that time I came back from the Galapagos and I said I didn't foresee taking another long blogging break?  Well, let's just say I certainly did not foresee this.  Work has literally been insane.  Plus I stopped being as big a hermit (still hermitize as often as possible however,) as I was the two months after Ecuador, so that has taken up a lot of free time that may have been spent blogging.  But don't get me wrong.  I have just had long day after long day.  This is the blog post I started to write five weeks ago, but then ran out of time and haven't been able to get back to since.  I figure I'll pick up where I left off, and then try to get a few more in this week to catch everyone up to speed on the happenings of my life.  Here goes!

There are a few things here in Uganda that have kept me sane through the insane times during my stay.  There have been very lonely times, very bored times, and very retrospective times.  All in between all the good stuff, of course, but it's definitely been there.  

My first link to sanity is my computer.  Without my email/blog outlet (which truly means hearing from all of you more than my being able to write - though writing is exceedingly therapeutic for me) I can't imagine what I would do.  It is literally my link to the outside world/everything that is familiar to me, and without it, I would probably cry a lot more often...  

The second bit of sanity is my nook - the eReader by Barnes & Noble.  I stuck a load of books on that thing before I came, and I cannot tell you what a relief it is to know that when I finish my book two hours into my six hour bus ride, I didn't have to pack another book that may or may not be attainable at the moment, I can just hit a button, and voila!  There is the next book!  It's also a very cozy friend on a rainy Saturday morning when I won't have to leave the house for several hours.

The third sanity-keeper is my guitar.  Before coming to Gulu, I knew I would miss my music, but I often wondered just how much I would miss it.  About six weeks into my stay I started fantasizing about practice rooms and pianos and taking voice lessons and singing in recitals.  Needless to say, I miss it a great deal.  If it weren't for my guitar out here, I truly don't know what I would do.  I will often sit and play for an hour, look up and realize there is actually a whole world surrounding me that I had forgotten about.  

I feel extremely blessed because all three of these things - the computer, the nook and the guitar were all very generous gifts from wonderful people in my life.  Unfortunately, I can't share my eReader with everyone, but I can share the computer with everyone through my blog and emails, and I decided it was time for me to share the guitar with everyone.  It has been almost exactly one year since I first started learning, and I am a rather poor self-taught guitarist.  I know about 20 songs, and I play those same twenty over and over, but I still love it.  I look forward to teaching in a music store again sometime so I can trade lessons with a guitar teacher and actually learn a thing or two about this instrument.  

There are three people I owe my guitar playing to, first is to a former student of mine who was also a guitar teacher.  One day he was telling me about a song he'd sat down and learned to sing and play one evening and I expressed my sincere jealousy of his guitar playing ability - just to be able to go home at the end of a long day and sit and play and sing, how great would that be?  He said, "You can borrow one of mine, Morgan, I'm made of guitars."  Later that week he brought me one and I went right home and re-taught myself all the main guitar chords (I had taught myself back in undergrad.)  I became obsessed with it over the next four-ish days and bragged to a friend of mine at work that I knew played guitar really well that I had learned to play over the weekend.  He told me I needed to show him my skills, so I went over to his place that night to play Scarborough Fair and 500 Miles.  He told me to stop strumming the bottom strings when I played my D chord.  I told him I tried, but I wasn't very good at it yet, and thus was born my informal guitar lessons.  He taught me a half-dozen or so songs over the next couple months, and consequently quite a few technical things I would never have gotten on my own.  

During those months I became so attached to playing the guitar everyday I did not want to give my student back his guitar, but since I was leaving DC for Utah before coming to Uganda, I knew it had to happen eventually.  I mentioned to my boss at the music store that I was looking for a cheap used guitar and he followed up with, "Well, now I know what to get you for your going away gift."  And sure enough, my last night teaching before I moved, as I was about to leave, he asked if I wanted blue, black or orange.  I could not have been more thrilled walking out with my very own guitar.  So, you three (who probably are not reading this,) thank you a million times over for my guitar start and my consequential moments of musical sanity over here in Africa.  

So.  Now.  Onto the music.  I only did 60 second clips or less so I could actually get them posted using my ridiculously slow internet. 

This first song I learned for my dad so I could play it for him while he recovered from surgery last fall - I know it's a song that has a lot of meaning to him so I thought it might cheer him up.  I never actually played it for him though...sorry about that daddy.  But, this one is for you.  (And I'll play it in full when I get back home.)

This song is the one I attribute to being the first "real" song I learned on the guitar.  Meaning, the first song that I didn't just play lame chords I found on the internet and pretended I knew a strumming pattern for.  It's also one of those songs I would put on the soundtrack of my life.  If my life had a soundtrack....

This song is for my momma.  Not because I sometimes feel like a motherless child, but because she has told me many times how much she likes this song, so every time I hear it I think of her.  And, of course,  thanks to her I never had to feel like a motherless child.  

This song reminds me of my childhood.  It was actually the song I played at my very first piano recital (a very impressive and virtuosic seven-year-old rendition I might add...) and of course, I grew up listening to Simon and Garfunkel and their beautiful canticle version.  Here's my own!

Lastly, I was in Kampala over the 4th of July weekend, and every Monday night on the lawn of the National Theatre, they do a sort of open mic night.  Somehow my friends talked me into singing and playing.  I had never played in front of an audience bigger than two people before (other than the random passersby when I would play on my front porch at my old place.)  So I'm not sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea.  It certainly wasn't the performance of a lifetime, but it did feel good to be infront of an audience again.  I did a cover of The Cranberries' Zombie.  It's a fun one :-)  The performance is too long to upload, so you'll just have to settle for a very dark picture of me and my borrowed guitar. 

Next up on the guitar docket?  Benefit concert for my recycling program!  It's August 19th - more details to come!

Hope you all enjoyed the concert!  I'll be back again soon with my next post....promise!