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The guitar's pull: a cautionary tale

For the better part of two weeks I have been unable or unwilling to listen to music. This happens every once in a while, but not for this long. And I know why it's happening, but that makes it no less bizarre, and it does nothing to make the mess of my office act like it's going to improve any time soon.

I mean, there's a new Dan Tyminski album on my desk. I'm sure it's good; how could it NOT be good? But I can't play it. Just can't turn the system on and push the CD in. Cannot do it.

So I can't think of any reason I decided to change the strings on the guitar today.

I don't really play the thing, but I was looking for a piece of rope for Maggie in the closet where it languishes, and it's too cold and I'm still a bit too sick to go anywhere and do anything, so I pulled the guitar out because Maggie likes to hit the strings and such.

Since I have spare strings here, and the guitar came with Susan and hasn't been played much in the last nine years, I thought, gee, I'll change the strings. I used to play a banjo (not well, just played it), I used to break strings all the time, I should be able to do this.

Yeah, well. With Maggie watching on a snow day.

Easy enough to unwind the sixth string, but then I couldn't figure out the other end, which turns out to have a cheap plastic plug holding it in place. Quality instrument the first husband left behind, eh? Pair of needlenose solved that.

And now I'm stuck. Somehow in changing phones I've lost a couple numbers, but I did e-mail a musician friend and call my brother to beg help. And there is a guitar shop in town, but I'm not going there because it's a small town and I'm supposed to know something about music, and this is just silly. So I'm waiting.

See...I can't figure out how to wind the dratted string. I used to know how to do this, but it's probably been 35 years. There are, of course, five other still functional strings for me to stare at, but they're no help. And then, of course, I tried too much. Snap!

Ah, well. Best to put the guitar back in the closet.

Posted by grant on February 28, 2008 11:58 AM | Permalink

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