March 20, 2020 – I’ve lived through at least two recessions that hit me directly. Lawyers are often hit very hard in recessions. I’ve lived through the effects of 9-11. But nothing can prepare one for this. In all the other bad times, there was a thought about what was next. But this time, the answer to the question: what’s next, seems to be … something worse.

I find myself having to choose between impossible alternatives: stay alone and fight for money to keep my financial things and business alive, or travel to Texas to be with my brother, while I still can, and lose everything. There is no help either. Not that that’s a surprise for me. There never has been.

Last week I had what appears like is going to have been my last guitar lesson. I haven’t told my teacher that yet, that last week was the last, but barring a miracle, it will have been. I guess I had a thought that it might be because, in the lesson, I loaded up on knowledge about how to play notes, and how to play all the scales and, apparently, the only mode that will matter for my musical taste. There was a song running through my head starting the day before that lesson. I played that song, preceded by a few things for the teacher, holding my phone for him to see the videos I had stacked and ready to go.

I played a Sasha Cohen skating video, for a couple purposes … because that represents a really happy place for me. Skating rinks. Skating, in general. I wonder if I’ll ever see that again. I literally make people appreciate skating, though I played it for the song, mostly – the theme to the 1968 movie Romeo & Juliet. That song has a guitar part; the part has notes, as I call them. It’s one of my favorite pieces of all time. I played a Lana Del Rey song called Old Money. It’s not a hit, not a song people will readily know, but I played it because it has the same melody as the Romeo & Juliet theme, another example of how Lana and I have such similar taste. Then I played a radio song from 2014 called Prayer in C. None of these are rock guitar things, but this time, in this lesson, I didn’t even think about the fact that these things are not rock, about how strange they are for a rock guitar player to teach. I played them because I was making a conclusion. I finally said the reality of my guitar dream – that I always wanted to make songs that are poems, with guitar notes in the background, like repetitive in nature things, not as rock as anything I’ve loved, but still guitar. Prayer in C is that – a poem, with a guitar riff, with a dance groove added to it. It was originally a folk song though, from about ten years ago, and it became a remix some years later (and now quite a few years ago); the dance groove is an add-on.

My teacher patiently watched each of the videos, and taught me how to decipher the Prayer in C song from the scale lesson. He said he’d help me write these songs. But I doubt I’ll ever see him again.

I had that song on my mind the Friday night before my lesson, one week ago, not the tune, but this one particular line. I found the song from that line and played it over and over. Mind you I had to see the lyrics sheets to do that, and I think the lyrics sheets are wrong. The online lyrics sites say “you”, as the person the song is directed to, but I think the song says Ya. That’s God. In Hebrew. These things I know. The song is a conversation said to God. Whatever anyone thought, this is the song I wanted to play as my last song, if it turned out to be that. It’s depressing. But depressing songs, for me, are a way to get out of the depression, a way of saying go away to depression, of at least acknowledging the feeling so I can then say go away. Oh and the line of the song did make for an appropriate question about prayers right now. Indeed I wonder how loud are the prayers right now? When are they going to be answered? I guess it makes sense to say the line now. The line I was thinking about was, See Our World Is Slowly Dying….

The song continues with a description of a crumbling world and the prayer of lack of forgiveness, lack of forgiveness by the person saying the prayer and by God too. If you actually listen to the songs I post, you’ll hear it.

I’ve seen video of people in Italy singing out of their windows – a moment of humanity, of the strength of the human spirit. But I’m still wondering what the thunderous sound of our prayers sound like right now. Is it a song? Is it noise? What?

As far as my question: what’s next? My question is really when will it end? And what will become of us? What will become of my life and everything I hold dear? It really is a lot. I keep wanting to do something, anything other than check the news. And I need to. I’m going to clean the house. I intend to practice guitar, to learn the guitar riff of this Prayer in C song and to be able to sing it at the same time. The funny thing is I’ve sat down to practice that song once, actually the day after my lesson. And on the first try I got it, the guitar, not singing at the same time, but I’ll take that. I wonder though, is it okay to play this right now? Do I sound ungrateful? I don’t mean to. Yet, I’ve always been a person who questions. And on the other hand, I’m a superstitious one. I suppose I could change the words in the conclusion of Don’t think I could Believe You to “I think I need to believe you.” Because we really need a miracle right about now. Please if there ever was a time. I want the answer to the question of what’s next to be: a miracle.