Not Complicated

I spend about an hour every day writing and singing songs on the piano and guitar. It’s a parttime passion. I have no professional musical ambitions, at least not yet, but I do love music and it’s great to be making it daily. Trouble is, my guitar-playing skills in particular are still wanting, having only picked up the instrument for the first time a year ago last Christmas. My guitar teacher delicately and generously mentioned that for someone “my age” I seem to be learning quickly, but I still have an awful lot learn.

Some days, I lament that I came to music-writing so late. I grew up in a house with a piano in the living room and a mother who played the guitar. Yet when I was nine, I chose to play the flute, perhaps the worst instrument for a would-be songwriter. You have no idea what key you’re in, nor do you care, and you will not learn one thing about harmony. If only I’d asked my mom’s best friend – a piano teacher, no less – to show me how to bang out some chords, or if I’d had my mom show me how to strum a D, A, and G, how great I’d be by now. One thing I’ve since learned, is that most of the songs I loved weren’t that complicated at all.

My guitar teacher told me how when he was nine, he went to a friend’s house to play Pokémon. His friend, however, had to finish practicing his piano first. As soon my teacher, Mitch, heard his friend begin to play, he said, “How did you do that? Show me how you did that.” He went home and demanded a piano of his own, and then a guitar, and was soon spending his days teaching himself how to play the songs from his parents’ music collection.

Whenever I try to travel back in time and rewrite the choices I made, try to stick myself at the piano or pick my mom’s guitar, I can feel, despite how much I loved music then, how unnatural it would have been for me. It’s like trying to make your characters in fiction do something they aren’t meant to do. I’ve tried to explain why I didn’t start writing songs then, but I can’t, other than it didn’t occur to me that I could. Only special people, I thought, could do that. In my mind, however, anyone could write a story. Just pick up a pen start. It’s not complicated at all.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com