Available Magic

I was watching a clip from the recent Beatles documentary Get Back of the “rooftop concert” the Fab Four gave at the end of the Let It Be recording sessions. John Lennon was singing I Dig a Pony, which I have always quite liked, and while I was trying to enjoy the performance, I found myself newly distracted by a detail that had never before concerned me: namely, what chords Lennon was playing on his Rickenbacker. Also, how quickly and effortlessly he was changing those chords. I knew he was a professional musician and all that, but Jesus it looked easy when he did it.

As I mentioned in an earlier piece, I received a guitar for Christmas and have been happily teaching myself to play ever since. It’s an experience both gratifying and frustrating. Having loved guitar music my entire life, it’s nice to be able to make that lovely, full, deep and twangy sound with my own hands, but irritating and disappointing whenever I fail to do so. Every practice session is a lesson in patience, as I must make peace with learning’s unavoidable pace.

What has changed immediately, however, and what I suspect will never be the same, is my relationship to the very thing that led me to want the guitar in the first place – the music. It’s true of all the arts. Once I started writing, reading changed forever. The men and women who told me stories were no longer the wizards I once perceived them to be. I could see in the sentences the choices the writers made, could feel those choices as if they were my own, and understood how something as non-dimensional as language nonetheless made a three-dimensional world come to life in my mind. 

So too with the music. I had always thought there was something magical about the immediate, emotional and physical impact songs had on me. I still love it, but now that I understand how that music is made, it does not seem magical anymore. That’s okay. I would rather know that I Dig a Pony’s chorus is just G, D, and A, and not a mysterious spell available only to other-worldly sorcerers. Anyone can write a story or song if they want. If there’s any magic in this, it’s how our desire compels us toward its own satisfaction.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

William KenowerWriting, William Kenower, The Beatles, Magic, MusicComment