“I am an amateur guitarist.
And I am better for it.”
Who says you have to be a seasoned pro to have a genuinely beautiful experience with your guitar?
Guest author Derrick Miller explores the gift and the grace of being a proud and happy amateur.
The Art of Being an Amateur
By Derrick Miller
It’s a noun. And it’s an adjective.
I fear beginning guitarists like myself give too much attention to the latter and not enough to the former.
We believe being amateur and being unskilled or unlearned are the same.
But the noun, the title or label or status does not refer to inexperience. It refers to doing something for the love of the thing. It needs no more definition than that.
I returned to music late in life because in my professional life there is really so little to love. And I came to realize I missed loving something.
I have been learning a simple fingerstyle piece in D. It is elegant in its simplicity. It is honestly beautiful without frills or ornamentation.
Many classical pieces are like that. You don’t have to know them or know how to play them to love them. And I love this little composition in D.
I also love beautiful wood. That is a hold over from a former woodworking hobby. So, picking up one of my guitars and holding it brings me an uncomplicated joy.
Then there is the company of other musicians who, without arrogance or superior tone offer encouragement and assistance.
What more can one ask of life than to find the beauty in music bringing to life the beauty in friendships, the beauty in human being?
I remember a line from a Keats poem about unreflected love.
At first I thought he meant love which was not returned until I realized such self-preoccupation is the counter of love. He meant love that has no forethought or contemplation, love in its immediacy.
That is what it means to be amateur.
It means the creation of a space in our lives to love something with unreflected love.
I am an amateur guitarist.
And I am better for it.
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©2009 Derrick Miller. Used with permission.
Originally posted on Acoustic Guitar Community
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