I've quit many things in my life: jobs, towns, people, friends, marriages, chewing tobacco (twice), pipe smoking, North Carolina, going home for Christmas, Sunday dinners with my grandparents, the grating buzz and gossip of extended family. There were others too. Some were painful, some were exhilarating, some were necessary, some were for the right reasons, some not, some carefully considered, others impulsive, some were more destructive than others, some surprised people, some hurt people, some brought tears, others relief, some were good things, some not so good, some terrible, some untroublingly dead, others unkillable, some for unforgettable reasons, others for unrememberable reasons, some nothing but whimsy without any reason at all. I have tried to quit trying but that never lasts. It would be like quitting quitting.
The most puzzling thing I ever quit was playing the guitar I loved to play.
Gibson LGO |
I've tried to figure out why. No luck. I even tried figuring it out in therapy. Still no luck. I suspect it is related to the fact that when I returned to New Mexico in 1993 I felt at home (New Mexico always has felt that way) and having quit more than one "home" (usually for better, sometimes for worse), I never intended to do it again. But my wife had the chance to go to school in Texas and I thought it was a chance she deserved. I was not happy to leave New Mexico, but I said yes for what I still think were the best of reasons. She deserved it. It seemed like a simple enough choice. I don't regret it.
But somehow I violated something so deeply embedded in my subconscious that I cannot dig it out, hold it up to the light and examine it, something hidden in a dark so dark there can never be enough light to see it. Perhaps I gave up my guitar to punish myself. Perhaps it was an expression of a profound sense of loss I could not express any other way. All I know is that quitting was a decision I did not consciously make and seem unlikely ever to understand.
Neil Young playing Hank Williams' D-28. |
Lately I have been thinking about quitting something else important: my writing. For a man who has shaped his identity and made his way with words - if not always his living - in one way or another for his entire adult life, it is a big decision.
I do not want it to follow my guitar playing into the silent dark. Right now that is all I know.
Word Machine |
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