hackerguitar

It's almost the annual day of ritual sacrifice with pie. For a variety of reasons, this is often the time of year when I empty my computer bag fully and clean it out. Last night, while doing so, I realized that the bag contained three things which have become talismans, two of which are music gear and definitely don't belong, but which are oddly comforting to have around.

The first is a pen - a nice piece of Brazilian rosewood - which B gave as a gift some twenty-two years ago. It's been in every briefcase/bag I've carried since. It's worn a bit with age, and it's required repair once or twice, but it's got a wonderful patina caused by handling, and the surface is worn smoother than any polish. When we got married, I signed the various paperwork with this pen, and used it for the mortgage papers as well. it's comforting to have close, as if B is with me, when I'm traveling.

The next is a bag of picks, guitar picks. These really aren't contextual - I've played since I was a child, and those people who know me know that most of my playing is done with fingernails, not picks. Even so, there's a bag of pick which are sporadically used. Some have come from friends - for example, a hundred-year-old tortiseshell pick which serves as a reminder of the giver, now deceased - and a few roma-jazz picks which came from playing in places where the risk/reward ratio was high, but paid off in knowledge and friendship. As much as I like having these in the bag, they don't belong, and went back into the gig-bag where they'll be accessible on the off chance I actually need them. I don't remember throwing these into my daily bag, so they've been in there since probably about last Christmas or so, when I was last travelling with an instrument.

The third is a capo, made by Rick Shubb in the darkest wilds of Mendocino somewhere. It's brass, with worn and loose rivets, and it had found its way into the daily bag because I'd been indolent and hadn't done a few things to fix it up. I've had it for a quarter of a century now, having purchased it in Newport, RI, during a folk festival after R & I broke up in the late eighties (I think that R, despite not playing music, still has an older capo of mine, which is just as well, I suppose). It's been my go-to capo for playing out until about a year ago, when the rivets holding it together finally wore to the point where it couldn't clamp onto the neck reliably. During the Healdsburg gtr festival, a Shubb rep rather generously offered to fix it (indeed the card for the gent to whom to send it is also in my bag), and so I put it in the daily bag with every intention of shipping it off for refurbishing.

Alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and there are very few FedEx shipping locations on it, so it's languished in the green interior of the bag since at least July of this year. During the unpacking process, I pulled it out, regarded it for a moment, and considered shipping it to Shubb, but I'm really loath to let it go; it's an old friend. So a bit of close examination revealed that the rivets were a bit worn, but that a few gentle taps with a hammer and anvil would tighten the worn rivets enough to make the capo workable, so into the shop we went. A few careful hammer-taps later, it's working again, and it's making a noticeable difference in the sound.

So, keepsakes, talismans, tools. I don't even think about them until I notice them in passing, at which point they become odd-shaped keys unlocking complex memories. The worn curve of a surface shaped by handling is a trigger, something that fans out to encompass the emotional memories of years, links in the chain of events which anchor a life.