Let Slip The Days Of Youth

Lately I've been missing being a teen. Well, more precisely I've been missing my old routine. I would come home, go to my room, drop the backpack and pick up the guitar. I'd find a pick (they were never where you left them) and then turn on some music and crank it up. Then I would play with the CDs for hours. Usually I'd play through all of the Misfits Famous Monsters, Metallica's Ride the Lightning, and half of Garage Inc. Disc 2. By the middle of that I was tired from jumping around and trying to keep the downpicking steady.

I wasn't playing the actual notes or chords or anything like that, I was just getting the tempo down. I wasn't really interested in playing those particular songs, but I wanted to play as fast as those particular songs and use that tool later on in my own writing.

I'd come out of the room soaked in sweat and open up a soda and sit down and tell my dad something like "I finally got the galloping method down" or "I was able to downpick through all of X" or "I was picking so fast my hand was a BLUR!"

I miss being loud sometimes.

Ah, but you grow up. You move into an apartment and your downstairs neighbors drop little hints about your guitar playing that makes you (if you're considerate) stop plugging in when you want to, stop turning up to where you want to, even stop playing acoustically as loud as you want to (and not on an acoustic guitar but an electric one). And I know there are those people out there that say so what? Let them be annoyed for a little while but I don't want to be that guy. It's bad enough I have to listen to loud car stereos bump by night after night as I'm putting my daughter to bed. I don't want to be the guy that everyone's thinking "well, he's only got ten more songs and then he usually quits."

Life has all sorts of different things in store for you when you grow up that I think it's more painful to look back and see the things you loved to do (nothing relieved stress more than a two hour downpicking marathon) and know that you can't do them anymore. Not for a while anyway. It isn't like you CAN and you choose not to, you just plain can't. It's a tough pill to swallow and I think that this is one of the toughest experiences of growing up (the bitter pills, not the whole can't play a lot of guitar thing). I mean, you come home from work and it's past five, you only have a few hours to spend with your child and once she's put to bed you want to spend time with your wife and then pretty soon you're getting tired because the day was long and soon you're in the sack asleep.

I just want to make this perfectly clear: I do not regret getting married or having kids or anything like that. I love my wife, I love my kids. But sometimes you miss the days you can't have back anymore. I think it's natural.