The Tangled Woods of History

I realise that the bass has taught me a lot about my life. It's a little sad that I played it for three years in my teens and only recently realised just how little I knew about the instrument and it's nature.

The truth is that, as with many things teens do, I picked up the bass because I wanted to fit in and the band needed a bassist because, of course, everyone wants to play guitar and drummers were hard to come by because parents willing to go through the ordeal of having a teen AND a drum set are a rarity themselves.

So there I am, a teenage bassist who really wants to play guitar, play solos, be the front-and-centre rockstar. Distorted power chords drowning the sonic subtleties of my Tanglewood Rebel 4K bass.

This has been the groove in which I've lived for a long time - feeling stuck somewhere I do not want to be, doing something I do not want to do, being someone I do not want to be. It's not much of a groove, but that's life. Sometimes I rush, sometimes I drag.

In the one and a half years that I've reacquainted myself with the bass guitar (after an unsuccessful affair with the guitar) the beauty that I'm discovering also clarifies the depths of my past folly. The discovery of groove, of rhythm, of laying down a foundation upon which melodies may express more complex emotions has blown my mind.

I guess I'm thinking about my bass guitar because I'm also thinking about what areas I'm disconnected from, do not appreciate fully and which will only be apparent ten years from now. Where do I wish I could be instead of the here and now? Is there beauty in the here and now that I am not fully appreciating? Or is it necessary (and a little sad) for me to move on to fully appreciate the past?

Questions without real answers. Questions, the value of which is in the contemplation rather than the answering.