February 16, 2020 – To what, you ask? To the Glastonbury Festival, starting June 24, 2020. Why, you ask? Well because it’s going to have Taylor Swift as a headliner for one of the days, Paul McCartney on the other, and before one of those headliners, Lana Del Rey. I would be hoping for a set that has Lana opening for Taylor, but so far the website doesn’t say if that’s the order. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even be able to speak after that – hours and hours of constant singing along to my girlies. Aerosmith is in there too, and I’ve never seen Sir Paul, so that concert would be really great for me.

And honestly, it’s appropriate now because my girlies, those two in particular, are teaching me. I’m at the point of playing whole songs, not just parts or riffs. I got through Taylor’s Delicate, the acoustic version, and it’s fast, fast, fast. I added Lana’s Ride to the mix, also getting through that one. It’s not fast, but it’s a different feel, so maybe it helped get through Delicate. Probably one should not start on a song as fast as Delicate for their first, but hey, I loved it, so I had to. And I think Taylor would appreciate this. I know because she recently did an acceptance speech for an award at the NME awards, whatever that is, in the U.K. She was funny because she walked on stage with her drink; she had a really cute outfit too, and she talked in what the Swifties (Taylor fans) refer to as drunk-Taylor mode. She really is funny when she’s drunk. It’s also funny because she appears to have skipped the Grammy’s to go the NMEs and accept their award, which is a giant middle finger statue. I’m sure there’s some subliminal message there, but I won’t go there. And I digress. The reason I say she would appreciate me learning from Delicate is that in her acceptance speech, she thanked the usual – the givers of the award, the other artists, the fans, but even before the fans, she thanked the bloggers who write about music, who care about music. So I’m sure she would like a blogger – me — who learns from her music! Now if only I could learn to not apologize for it all.

My guitar lesson this week was yesterday, 9:00 a.m., one day post Valentine’s Day. It’s almost embarrassing to do anything that early on the day after Valentine’s Day. It ruins my street cred; I should be in some chocolate-covered-strawberry coma, with flowers all around, but I did make that morning my own. I literally brought my Taylor Swift song-book, a tool so I could talk about crazy chords – chords over other things, like, okay this is from the top of my head, an A over an F. And A5; apparently that’s book-code for the A power chord. The teacher seemed like he thought this was a good subject, so we learned that, me sometimes referring to my book. Last week I was trying to learn a new song on my own, and I settled on a song that’s not in the book, another Taylor song, All Too Well. It’s an old Taylor song; she played it at the Rose Bowl show I went to in the part of the set where she would add a surprise song that was different from city to city. I have a recording of it, somewhere. I told the teacher that’s what I want to work on next, All Too Well. I didn’t play any of it in the lesson; he just looked up the chords on the Internet. I really am seriously trying not to annoy this guy too much with the over-abundance of Taylor Swift. Well I say that, and I brought a whole Taylor song-book. Oh, and people who bring homework the day after Valentine’s Day certainly have no street cred. As for the song, it turns out it has the same chords as those other two I’ve been working on – Delicate and Ride, and so instead of playing the chords in the traditional fashion as I have been, I decided, okay he decided, I should try playing All Too Well as all power chords. Mind you, it’s a really long song, so this will be a challenge.

As for the first two songs, I did plan on playing Delicate and Ride during my lesson, but … I didn’t. I don’t know, perhaps having whole-song-ability for only a week is not enough time to have enough confidence. Perhaps I’m still not ready to perform in front of a person. Perhaps I didn’t want anyone else to hear – neighbors, sleeping wife, cats. Or perhaps I am still embarrassed that my songs I’m playing are heavy on Taylor Swift, but there is something really powerful about knowing every word and every sound to these songs that makes it so much easier to play along, so much easier to learn. I can even hear the chords now, because I know these songs. I never thought I’d be able to do that. I don’t know when I’ll be able to play for someone other than my birds and dogs, oh and my bunny, or if ever, but hopefully I will.

Perhaps it will be All Too Well that’s the first song I play publicly. And maybe that’s fitting because the title reminds me of this phrase my mother used to say that annoyed me to no end. I mean really annoyed me to no end. If one of us kids would say anything about a situation, she would say, how well I know. It used to be that phrase would simply shut down a conversation; my mother wasn’t listening anymore. But now, that phrase has become a joke between my brother and me; we use it for everything annoying that we cannot change. It helps us cope when we are frustrated with a situation. And we laugh every time we say it. Isn’t it funny what people leave us with, even if non-intentionally?

So I thank Taylor and Lana for their inspirations. You are teaching me guitar. I would so like to see a show with them back-to-back, and it seems someone else had that idea. It’s a good idea. It is. I hope the many, many people who get to see it, like it. And now for this week’s song for me to learn, all five minutes plus of it, I dedicate this to my mother. Ten years an angel. Today. I miss you like it was yesterday, and I’m sorry I never got to say goodbye. When I get through this song, hopefully you give me the courage to play it in public, to a public of a guitar teacher, sleeping people, neighbors, and cats, but that is public. May I do it justice.