FLIRTING WITH MELODIES

Grandpa was a musician. Me played in a band, did concerts and the like. Grandpa gave me my first guitar. It was just the right size for a boy of four. I remember plucking the strings of the classical steel string that I had been given. My uncle, who I saw more often, began to teach me chords.

Uncle Stephen helped me write my first song, I was 6. It was about monkeys, I think.

This weekend brought back a lot of memories from my childhood. I don't know why. I felt emotionally drained for about four days, I don't know why. Usually when this happens melodies dance through my head many times to the point of annoyance, along with the poets and poltergeists of days past.

I remember when I got my second guitar. I had long outgrown my first one. I was about ten. Uncle Stephen came over late one night. He told me had a present for me. He walked in the door with a big black plastic bag in his hand. It was a shiny new guitar. He had saved up for it. We played together and wrote songs (He did most of the writing). I couldn't sleep that night, I played my guitar for hours, knowing that in the morning I would be at school and would get to enjoy my new toy. It was at this time that I started playing regularly because I wanted to.

I remember coming home sick in the middle of a Disciple Now my 8th grade year. I wrote my first song on my own that night, but I played it for no one.

This weekend, I started flirting with new melodies. My head spun with the orchestrations of my mood. A symphony in my head raged on as I slept, guiding my dreams. I got out ink and paper and began to pen a symphony.

I remember our family traveling across Texas because my dad was asked to preach for some revival service or whatever. I remember coming home after 10+ hours on the road. I remember the smell of my room. I remember coming home from school on a fall afternoon. Mom had the windows open throughout the whole house; she was frying shrimp for dinner.

I remember being in love in high school - thinking somehow that would be my life. I remember being thankful that it didn't turn out to be my life after all. I remember my freshman year, when I asked out a girl for the first time in college. I remember how I felt when she said no.

I remember playing a new piece for my music composition professor and him telling me it sucked. I remember re-writing it and playing for him again and him telling me it was the best thing he'd heard from a beginning composition student.

Melodies are not something I usually work to compose. Melodies are the soundtrack to my life, heard in the deep recesses on my mind. They are my emotions, my thoughts.

So, tonight I'm flirting again, just to see how far my mind can take me.