Going over the same painful ground

Just going over the same painful ground.

There was some time this morning before running for the train to practice the scales and continue trying to learn some bar chords.

Bar chords are hard. Everyone will tell you that. Eddy Vedder will, too. He tells a great story of stealing a music book from church that held nothing but open chords. But I don’t want to keep playing the same old basic chords. I don’t want to keep strumming the same old C-F-G, A-D-E progressions with a few minors thrown in for spice. Even though it sounds pretty.

I’ve gone over this ground so many times…hearing that same dead sound…Bm7…seeing my fingers bent and twisted like the legs on a dead spider…Bm…been frustrated so many times the same way…knowing where my fingers are supposed to go. But if I want grow I know I have to keep doing it, though there is no promise that I’ll get it, really.

The other chords sound so good. You’d think it would get easier. It doesn’t. But…I finally got F, didn’t I? F. Named well. F, like effing F.

Going over the same painful ground.

We do the same things over and over again in our lives. Making the same ugly sounds. Twisting ourselves in ways that hurt, trying to make beautiful music. And it keeps coming out ugly.

Are we truly condemned to keep making the same mistakes over and over again until we get it right? One life after another until finally we’re beautiful? Over the same painful ground until we’re beautiful?

Sometimes it seems I just keep swapping positions.

Someone hurt me as badly as I hurt someone else.

One night, it seems so long ago, I told Sue if she totaled me up and described me to her friends, the bottom line would be they would tell her to run like hell. She told me, in essence, that there was more to me than my sum total.

And I remembered another night that what Sue said to me I told someone else. And I thought, don’t make the same mistake she did.

Swapping places.

Looking in another’s eyes and knowing you’ve known that person your whole life, all your other lives. And knowing they just don't get it. Knowing you’ll do it all over again. That same ugly music. Those same contortions.

So…pick up the guitar. Again and again and again.