Guitar Lessons

When you're named for a jazz guitarist, you pretty much grow up thinking you were born to play guitar. I was named after Larry Coryell. I don't play guitar. I don't own a guitar. I don't even consider myself musical, although I sing and play piano. But I want to play guitar. Always have. I've tried to play but haven't stuck out practicing past the initial sore-finger stage. When a friend heard I wanted to take up the guitar this summer, she was, unwittingly, an answer to prayer when she offered to let me borrow the guitar her elderly mother gave her. A $500 Fender, never played, not a scratch. I said yes, please. Today, I signed up for lessons with another friend. Thursday is the day. My fingers are numb, but I know five chords and my strumming is improving already.

Here's the deal, and this applies to other things besides guitar playing: you don't practice, you don't succeed. It's not as if people are born with magical powers enabling them to excell at whatever they make look so easy. We're born with the capacity for greatness, and we have to work hard to achieve it. (I'm a good cook, but not because I was born with a wooden spoon in hand. I've been practicing my culinary arts for over twenty years until cooking seems utterly natural to me. If my friends think its genius, I must re-inform them! It's practice, practice, practice!)