Monogamy With My Mahogany: An Essay On Simplicity

My first one had been battered by another player. He was a poet, slim, hybearded, and actually sold his original poems for a living. I knew him in his early years before he became famous, those years when he would stand on the street corner peddling his wall paper poetry. It was always the short verse, usually his haiku, that he orationed with enthusiasm. Too bad that same enthusiasm never ventured to his playmate. Instead, he battered her, eventually giving her to me because it was the convenient thing to do at the time. I, too, was a poet and he liked some of my stuff. But it was really because of her, that I learned to play, and I knew the whole time I would never forsake her as did he. Our relationship lasted just a year, until an acquaintance, another poetician, stole her away one hot summer evening.

My second one I met by chance in a music shop. Those days I would oft avert every day strife, languidly strolling the songbook aisles of the music shops on junket Saturday mornings. And in one bright moment there she was, flexuous, blue, and beatific! It was love at first sight! Strangely though, it was never meant to be. My lust for her outward appearance was but a deception, and within a couple years slowly realized she was, and always would be, a six stringer. By mutual agreement she returned to the musical place from whence she came.

And since then I've doubled my pleasure and doubled my fun. My latest being a dreadnought with plenty of style, cherry sides, cedar top, mahogany neck, and a gorgeous resonance that bellows big rich and rounded sounds whenever I strum anywhere along any her twelve strings!

She was introduced her to me by my colleague, Kent. She was just one of his seven concubines, never mistreated, but never really favored either. Needless to say our beginnings together were somewhat amoral, but the more I touched her, the more I liked her, and the more I liked her, the more addicted I became to her, and the more immoral my fantasies. Nothing about her resembled her antecessors.

Cap-a-pie she has become my sole mate. Whenever together I dress for the occasion, hatless, in a crisp white shirt, faded blue jeans, upon either work boots or sandals. On a busk we are forever in complicity, guileful, continually setting up our ambuscade of street music surprise. The more times I busk with her, the more in apotheosis I revere her. Stroking her strings has become my daily intoxicate – this is my simple, simple pleasure.

[photograph courtesy of William Wright]

Behavioral counseling often poses/offers three questions for clients:

Who am I? What have I been doing? Where am I going?

I wrote this following song in response.

GOING SOMEWHERE

INTRO:

D A Em

[Em]Hey hey I'm [C]going, I'm [Am]going some[Em]where

[D]I[A] don't know [Em]where

[Em]I'm not going [C]back, no I'm [Am]not going [Em]there

[D]ne[A]ver [Em]again [X2]

Em C Am Em D A Em

Hey hey I'm going, I'm going somewhere

I don't know where

Em C Am Em

I've been in chains and I've served my time

D A Em

never again [X2]

C Am Em D A Em

Hey hey I'm going, I'm going somewhere

I don't know where

Em C Am Em

I've been in arms, been a soldier at war

D A Em

never again [X2]

[instrumental and humming]

Em C Am Em D A Em

Em C Am Em D A Em

D A Em

Em C Am Em D A Em

Hey hey I'm going, I'm going somewhere

I don't know where

Em C Am Em

I've been in love, had my heart broke enough

D A Em

never again [X2 & FADE]