Guitar Playing as Guitar Praying
Let’s be honest–I’ve probably transgressed all kinds of religious doctrines over the past couple weeks of delineating the contours of the Love Guitar approach to playing music on the guitar.
By now, hopefully you have figured out that I support your creed, no matter what it is, as long as it leads you to be ever more compassionate, kind and loving.
The world has enough in-fighting and disunity.
Within the approach to guitar playing that I call “Love Guitar,” to be a guitar player is to be a guitar prayer. It is to celebrate the gift of life in each moment by issuing the most beautiful and sublime music possible whenever fingers touch guitar strings.
You don’t have to be of a certain level of technical proficiency to pray when you play. A single note or chord played with presence and intention can resound as powerfully as the most complex symphony. The world needs your music, now. Don’t fall for the self-doubt that would have you silence yourself until you’re at this or that point in your development.
As you move forward on the guitar, embrace your playing as a form of prayer. In the most open, inviting and universal sense.
In my world, to pray is to give thanks to everything for everything. Substitute your favorite words for “everything” in that sentence and see what you get.
If you like “God” and “life,” then to pray is to give thanks to God for life.
If you like “Spirit” and “breath,” then to pray is to give thanks to Spirit for breath.
On and on it goes, and all are welcome here.
Ultimately, if you have heeded the call of the guitar, then you have a mighty opportunity to stand for something good in the world. You can stand for Love, for Peace, for Kindness, for Compassion, for Understanding. For the Golden Rule. For Something Good.
I received a major musical education from my time volunteering at Alive Hospice playing music for patients who were either dying in that moment or knew they were about to.
Death is a great clarifier, and the modern mainstream culture of our time for whatever reason tries its best to sweep it under the rug and out of sight.
Death is here to keep us real, and my time in the hospice impressed upon me the power of different types of attention.
In the mainstream world, you’ll generally find a pretty fragmented, distracted form of attention. You can hear this in much of the music that passes as popular–it isn’t music to die to, or even to really live to. It’s mostly music to be distracted to. Stumble through the day and, whatever you do, don’t think about the fact that this day was a total gift and you are never guaranteed another one.
When I played in hospice, I immediately noticed that the song I was playing would often be the very last song that the person in front of me would ever hear. For some of the people I played for, the music coming off of my guitar was the very last thing they ever heard in the physical world.
That’ll give you a different perspective on what it means to play music on the guitar.
There are other places where you can find exquisite attention. Hospice is one, but there are many others. And the greatest musicians can instigate total attention in their audiences due to their command of Playing as Praying.
For you, wherever you are in your musical development, just know that you can play, or you can pray by playing.
There is a huge difference.
The Golden Rule Come Alive
No matter your background, the Golden Rule points at essential truth. We are all connected, and how we treat one another matters. If you expect to be treated well and kindly and with lots of love, then it is up to you to treat others in that same way.
The Golden Rule is a pointed invitation to be creative. To imagine the world you would like to inhabit and then to create it.
The creative applications of the Golden Rule are literally limitless.
But let’s apply the Golden Rule to our guitar playing.
Imagine that you are sitting in an audience listening to a guitarist. Which guitarist would you prefer to listen to?
–A guitarist who was distracted and thinking about something mundane like what they would have for dinner after the gig
–A guitarist who was running over the argument he had with his wife or manager or the sound person just before s/he went onstage
–A guitarist who was thinking about what a badass they sounded like as they ran through a crazy set of licks
–A guitarist who was afraid and feeling insecure about how much they thought they sucked but wanted the audience to like them
–A guitarist who was holding a pure prayer of joy, love, awakening and healing for each member of the audience in front of them
–A guitarist who was holding a pure prayer of joy, love, awakening and healing for all Beings everywhere in the Entire Universe
Seriously–do you think intention matters? Experiment in your own life and find out just how much it truly does matter.
So, here is my prayer for you, whoever you are, as you read this–that you realize how much more is possible in your life and how much more beauty you can create and give as your gift to this world very much in need of what you have to offer. That you push through all the fears to rise up and sing your song fully from your open heart. That you align yourself with the Good Things in life–joy, love, kindness, service, compassion, courage. And that you use every single moment that you play the guitar as a chance to pray the guitar and spread a positive vibration everywhere you go.
Maybe none of this matters. Or maybe all of it matters far more than any of us really understand.
