A tribute to my first guitar...

Tonight I came to the realization that along with my brother's CD player, my guitar was also stolen out of my car two nights ago.

This guitar brought me great joy for the last 7 years. I bought it in Sahuayo Michoacan in July of 1997 (that's the last time I was in Mexico). At the time, I knew little about guitars. My father took me to a shop that sold various goods. The owner had 2 or 3 guitars hanging about 10 feet up the walls of his store.

He handed me a light colored instrument which I tried to play. I instantly knew that there was something different about this guitar, the nylon strings felt so smooth! The guitar itself was light as a feather. The sound was full and resonated deeply. I happily paid $250 for this beautiful masterpiece –hand crafted in Paracho Michoacan by a fellow named Díaz.

I loved this guitar although I was somewhat careless with it. Over time, it received a few scratches -mainly from an irate kid who decided to scratch the "F" word into it because he hated me for kicking him out of a youth center. It also developed some large cracks because I banged it about too much.

Remarkably, my guitar still sounded good! I even took it to the Guitar Hospital in Los Gatos so they could fix it up a bit. They did an excellent job. Unfortunately, at a family gathering on my Mexican side, I left it in its case, lying on the ground so I could do a card trick on my cousins. When I got home, I discovered that my little cousins, who had been running around and being crazy, had stomped on the case while chasing each other re-cracking the guitar and making it look worse than ever.

At that point, the guitar lost some of its original clarity but it still sounded as good as guitars that cost hundreds of dollars more. For me, the guitar is priceless, it has sentimental value matched only by my messed up Korg X-2 synthesizer and perhaps even surpassing it. I wrote the Chihuahua song with this guitar. I sang to kids at Church with it. I took it to Camp all three summers that I worked there. It went with me to Morocco and back. I played it in Central Park in New York with a bunch of Italian ladies and made 10 bucks with it! I took it to Santa Cruz and played in the moonlight with my friends.

The memories I have with that guitar bring me joy that far surpasses my initial anguish and sorrow. I am thankful that God allowed me to use it for as long as I did. I always told myself that it wasn't my guitar anyway, it didn't really belong to me. It was greater than that.

It's weird but that guitar was like a friend –closer than a friend. Many times, in struggles and loneliness, I cried out to God as I played. And I sang this song;


¿Por qué te abates, oh alma mía,
(Why are you downcast, O my soul?)


Por qué te turbas dentro de mí?
(Why so disturbed within me?)


Espera en Dios; porque aún he de alabarle,
(Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,)


Salvación mía, mi Dios.
(my Savior and my God.)


In the end, I am thankful for the time I had with my first and only guitar.