22. IT'S SUPPOSED TO HURT

I stopped in the middle of my lesson, as if my music angel knocked me on the shoulder and told me to pay attention. I looked out at my class of students, down on the main floor of the art center, ten feet apart from each other and wearing masks. I was up on the stage, being socially distant.  My old lady eyes were too far away to really look into theirs. 

“OK everybody, I said, take a break and shake out your hands.” They all instantly let go of the necks of their guitars.  There was a collective sigh of relief, muffled under those masks.  We shook our wrists and stretched our fingers against each other in the fashion of prayer.

“Do your fingertips hurt?” I asked. 

They nodded, a few of them attempting to blow on the tips of their left hands through their masks.

“Good!”

I held up my hand and looked at the tips of my own fingers.

“If you are just learning to play guitar, and you are playing it the way you should, then your fingers should hurt. If they don’t hurt, you’re not playing it in the right position, with the right amount or pressure, to achieve the sound you want. The thing is, if you are consistent, then eventually you will build up calluses, and it won’t hurt so much anymore.”

I suggested there are a couple ways to build those calluses. 

One: you can go out to the sidewalk and scrape the tops of your fingers back and forth across the rough cement.

Or, two: you can play your guitar.

Last spring, when the gigs disappeared in one fell swoop because of the pandemic, my guitars ended up sitting silent for quite a while. Sad, I know. One thing I have discovered about myself, through this crazy year, is that I use music as a form of communication. Many of my musician friends and family, perhaps most of them, use music as a form of therapy. They’ll pick up a guitar and start playing any moment of any day. I feel a strange sort of shame in the fact that I don’t find much pleasure in that. My guitar is a song facilitator. If I’m not writing a song, or preparing for a gig or preparing to teach a lesson, then I leave those beauties hanging on the wall or sitting in their cases. 

Our front stairway.

So, when many months later I decided to try teaching again, using the large hall in the Farmington Arts Center, I was brought to a painful realization. By the time my fourth classful of students came in, my fingertips were throbbing. It was a sensation I have not experienced in decades. I told that last class that I was feeling their pain and it was probably good for me. 

I’ve since rebuilt my calloused fingertips.

This pandemic has been an effective teacher in many ways. It offered me a good reminder to keep the engine oiled, so to speak, even if you’re not driving all that much. And I also realized that it helps, sometimes, to acknowledge that some things are supposed to hurt.

Knowing something is supposed to be hard, that it is normal to hurt, makes it a little easier to get through. It’s confirming. It doesn’t take away the hard, or the hurt, but somehow it helps.