h.o.n.u.r
A life-long music lover, h.o.n.u.r, didn't actually pick up an instrument until nearly age forty. Spending his career in advertising creative direction, the stars just never aligned until...they did. Suffering from chronic illness for almost a decade, made worse by Covid- doing less with more became a way of life as he tried to heal (or at least tried not to get worse). Eventually taking hiatus from work and watching the world go by, memories of an old pawn shop Fender Stratocaster inspired a second try at the guitar to regain focus in an uncertain time.
Music has always occupied a special place in my life. Always a song playing in my office while working. In my headphones while doing chores, while driving and so on. All types of music. As a teen I would tune in to the local underground hip hop station airing late at night and listen to MC's freestyling. My antenna also picking up scraps of the Stretch and Bobbito show from three hundred miles north up in New York City. Door closed, enamoured by lyrics over whimsical jazz beats I couldn't believe.
Led Zeppelin when I felt inspired and wanted be floored by Jimmy Page's riffs, Bonham's double kicks and Plant's seemingly endless range. The Beatles? Of course! Bossa Nova- Jobim, Gilberto, Getz; Blues, Pop, Dance, Drum and Bass and on and on. I couldn't get enough of hearing music. As I grew up a bit I started appreciating the inner workings of music-realizing the art of it more than ever. John Mayer, just a few years my senior, was one of my first live shows in 2001. Expecting only his pop hits, he instead treated us to Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaugn and much more. I was speechless. His Fender Stratocaster looked like a relic, and I realized why, he bent the will of the fretboard to whatever his brain commanded. It was simply incredible.
When I was twelve my mother treated me to a white Fender Stratocaster we found at a pawn shop. I tried to learn to play for months, eventually taking lessons from a musician in the neighborhood. Apparently a rare find, my pawn shop guitar was the reality of music. It turned out the previous owner was a musician and fell on hard times, having to give it up. Not realizing it was valuable, I now felt more pressure to play it well. I did anything but, and drove my family, as well as my neighbor's, up the walls. The guitar eventually joined my stacks of broken skateboard decks before convincing the pawn shop owner to take it back. So as I sat on my couch twenty-seven years later, suffering like many others with the novel effects of Covid on my mind and body, through peaks and valleys of immune crashes and doctor visits over the years, I listened to a lot of music. In a moment of optimism, I ordered a guitar with the thought; maybe with the time I have stuck like this, I can learn to play. Maybe it will help.
The guitar propped up in my office, now vacant of advertising work that filled seemingly every inch of time and space spent in it, stood like a statue in a gallery. The only thing to be productive with, I would learn a riff, ruin a song, re-arrange it, and ruin it some more, and then finish it off with zeal. Well this is going gangbusters, I thought! I put down the guitar and didn't pick it up again until just days ahead of my 40th birthday. I gave myself a year to see what I could do. If I could play any music, success. If I couldn't, still success, as long as I kept picking the thing up each day. Because why not? What is there to lose? That year came and went on the guitar as eight years passed of being ill in one form or another, and miraculously, life became beautiful again. Not the same, but beautiful.
The Acoustic Evening Project came to life as a way to celebrate not giving up. To play music for the love of music itself and moving forward through this crazy life as best as you can. As a guitar novice, I found the most welcoming group of people across the globe. Muscians, artists, in all forms are an inspiration to me. Also those who suffer chronic illness, the millions missing, as a part of that group, they inspire me always and forever.
When you are without strength, agency and resolution- to simply exist is profound. Onward.
