The Passion of the Air Guitar
You know how you like to put on an Erroll Garner CD sometimes and lie back on the sofa and imagine you’re somewhere–I know–that cool little bar with the piano downstairs at Blake’s in London–and you sit down and launch into “I Got the World on a String” and when you’re finished the killer Sloane Ranger at the far table walks over and asks you to play “Misty” for her? Or, maybe you’re at a Norwegian Christmas party and you’ve had a few Linjes and Elephant chasers and the band is really great except for the guitar player and you walk over and ask if you can play one and you launch into “Oh, they’re floodin’ down in Texas…’ and everybody goes holy shit, what happened here?
Do musicians have musical fantasies like us civilians? Does Eric ever put on Stevie Ray and pretend that he really does understand the blues experience? Nobody fantasizes about being a great accountant. What is there about making music that makes everybody want to do it, or pretend they’re doing it?
The reason why almost everybody fantasises about a “peronally taylored” musical experience where they are “blowing everybody away” while others listen in awh is because music is a creative form of expression meant to be shared to others and aknowledged by others. As human beings who want and enjoy communicating their ideas and who they are, or whatever else they want to communicate, the opportunity to be able to communicate through music and the notion that everybody else would love hearing what we want to say is just an awsome experience to fantasise about.
Being a creative opportunity for communication is what makes it so much fun since we can be creative and protrait who we really want to be in our own creative way while imagining that everybody else is going to love what we have to say. Thats the main pleasure, getting everybodys attention and thinking that they are all getting pleasure from what we have to say.
That’s okay, Jay. Most of mine involve being 20 again and giving this whole composer thing another try … and maybe doing it right this time.
Dennis
I secretly bought (under my mothers nose) at age 15 a fretless Fender bass guitar that I saw Sting had on the cover of the Police record “Zenyatta Mondatta”. Do I fantasize about being Sting? No, never.
Most of my performance fantasies seem to involve me playing viola. *depressed sigh*
Dude, I’m playing Accountant Hero right now! If I can get this set of books to balance I’ll have the high score!
When i’m not doing Erroll, i do Thelonius…but for a hipper crowd.
For myself, it is Thelonious Monk’s piano, Frank Zappa’s guitar and Keith Moon’s drumset (with Ringo occasionally thrown in). Shostakovitch’s Second ‘Cello Concerto, third movement. I rememer one time on a band trip in high school of listening to side two of Abbey Road and having a spontaneous three-way guitar battle in “The End”. I would guess it is being in and of the music that makes “air-axing” fun…