Monday, April 16, 2007

guitar man

MyJohn collects guitars. Serious guitars. Boutique guitars as he calls them. That means one of a kind, special made, above the rest. Definately not mass produced. We've been organizing his condo into a more rational layout. Rational layout defined by me, of course. The guitars have been pulled out from all corners and stacked neatly on a shelf. They're easier for him to get too and play and they aren't underfoot this way. Each one is different according to John. I get the visuals, the "rootbeer strat" and the "cherry burst strat" looks different despite them both being strat's. That's Stratacaster to those of you guitar challenged. What excites John is that they sound differently. He says. I think it takes a discerning ear frankly. A g note played on one sounds the same as a g note played on the other. Right? But oh these guitars make him happy. Each time we arrange a guitar on the shelf it is removed from it's case and played for a while. John's fingers fly up and down the neck picking out notes. Sometimes he slides them along the string for a raspy sound, other times he flicks the string to create harmonic's. All of the time he grins blissfully. The last one he brought out for organizing is a double necked guitar. It's body is a shiny black with glitter shot all through it. John's grin reached new dimensions as he sat down to play this one. I took several pictures of him with it and was pleased with the way the glitter reflected. For his part, John could have been out in a field all alone or on a concert stage. Playing that guitar made him very happy. It was fun to watch.
The congenitally blind people I know don't have much facial expression. They rarely smile and when they do it is often contrived and gruesome. I think smiling is somewhat universal though so when John is happy he does smile. He's got dimples. I think that's cute. I kind of think he's cute, but could be prejudiced. He's myJohn. I sure am glad of that.

No comments: