Guitarra

Guitarra. The guitar is crucial, of course. And at the beginning it was all I had on the wall. Even now, I’ve kept it simple. Maybe anticipating these changes? In the old office, before the 1999 retrofit, when all of us in the South Tower had to decamp for half a year, the walls were overflowing. You could almost not see the wood. My model (I still think of it) was a capilla in the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. The pilgrimage church for all of México. People would bring votive offerings to the priests, who would affix them to the walls of the chapels. The one I remember in particular had years and years of such remnants--bits of paper, bone, personal items (a comb, a pair of glasses, a part of a crutch) and of course photographs, paintings, drawings. Probably retablos, too, although at the time of my visit (in the summer of 1965) I was barely done with my first year at Reed, so I doubt that I’d have known how to recognize one. But I do remember the effect of seeing that wall--and in some sense I’ve searched for it ever sense. The density, for one thing (its layers were inches thick) but more than that, the sense of time. That each element had found its place, one by one, in response to the events themselves. There was no way to pretend here--a boat on the Gulf of Mexico in a storm, almost lost, the sailors made a prayer to the Virgen--if they were saved, they’d carry the main mast all the way to her church. Which they did, of course--it’s there in the broad courtyard just outside. Hundreds of kilometers from the sea…

The guitar itself has something of this, I’m thinking now. Not through externals--all the imagined stories and references of history--but in its shape. Its lines. Each new maker internalizing them, taking them in as his own kind of map of tradition. Doesn't even have to be a fine instrument--the one here is a Yamaha, from Japan, made in the 1990s. At some point the neck was broken--I think Mauricio took it into to Fat Dawg for me (Fat Dawg, long time proprietor of Subway Guitars, on Cedar Street, in Berkeley) who reset it (yes, you can see the expoxy) but he knew what he was doing, and the fingering is fine. It’s held that spot on the wall ever since. Including (there at the top) a piece of red cord--actually the sweatshirt tie from Aaron Newman--the young son of a dear friend. Left in my old VW bus, no doubt--maybe I used it to wrap or pad something, the sweatshirt itself being much too small--and then at some point I decided to let it go--but since it was so connected with Daniel--and with Sandra (Betsy’s dearest friend) I had to hold on to at least a part of it--and so the cord has been attached there ever since… That’s what the guitar hangs from…

Which means I think of them all (all now gone) each time I play it…

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