I’m very fascinated by hands lately. My hands in particular. My fingers spinning out words that are my Voice in the universe. That kind of big picture existential crap but also just how wonderful they are in and of themselves. The fascination partly stems from the boxer’s fracture to the 3rd metacarpal (now mostly healed) that I incurred this spring. Partly, too, I just spent 40 blissful minutes at guitar practice grooving on the recently discovered mind-body connection that playing guitar is really just my two hands, dancing. Why that is so powerful to me is at least two fold (maybe even more by rant's end); that it is through the brilliance of my mind expressed through the skill of my fingers I have found my Voice in this world as a writer, and I have always loved to dance above all things. Those of you who are only recently acquainted with me may find that surprising. But my sisters are nodding - they know. The story of me as a dancer is long and perhaps at some point deserves to be told, but not really into long regurgitations of the past today. I will say this, more than love more than youth, more than money, children, career or fame, the loss and erosion of my physical ability to dance is the single greatest tragedy of my life. Time will tell of course, but it could be that discovering the guitar could be that life's greatest renaissance.
My father always complimented my hands. He thought they were my single most beautiful feature. And the thing that a little girl’s Dad values about her is a weighty and mythic thing indeed. If you just look at them you will likely shake your head and perhaps even think – “They look pretty ordinary to me”. Because it is true – in repose they are nice, but not mythic not special. The fingers are not particularly long or delicate, the palms square, the index fingers a bit too bent. But, there is just something about the way they are attached to the rest of me – how they move – their strength and lightness of being that is some how singular. I could just be making this all up, but I have proof of a higher sort. Dame Margot Fontaine once adjudicated my ballet exam and it was the single phrase she uttered in my direction “Lovely arms”. She should know.
All this to say that daily practice of the guitar has brought the joy of dance back into my life. Daily guitar practice too has taught me some new things about writing that, while I may have acknowledged them intellectually hitherto, are now seeping in down to the bone. Keep at it. Each perfect chord is preceded by hundreds of failures. Trust, be gentle with yourself, keep pushing forward. While you can, will and must judge your writing by the standards of others, keep the faith. Never be so despairing of your own ineptitude or lack of discipline that you stop. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, a good joke included in an email – copied and saved for later Above all, remember that just as you have your favorite music and singers and writers, that everyone else does too. Don’t fret if someone you value is lukewarm in their praise, there are others, total strangers even who will hear your writer’s voice as if angels were singing.
Virgina Wolfe used to despair after reading Marcel Proust that she would never be as good a writer, so perhaps she should cease the effort. She found a perfection in his prose that gave her both joy and pain. I’ve wandered down that mental path a time or two after reading Oscar Wilde – oh, I think – I’ll never be that good, so is it worth the effort? God knows I’ll never play guitar like Segovia, or Jesse Cook, or Charo or even my own real life examples, Candice, Remigio and David the V. But I will play like Carolynne. I will write like Carolynne and who am I or you or anyone to say that I won’t be someone else’s Proust or Segovia or Oscar Wilde?
