The Guitar

And the musical act of defining a life

My stint as a would-be singer-songwriter in the my college years: beat-up Levis, denim work shirt, a Jerry Garcia beard, hair nearly to my shoulders, a head full of ideas, and a six-string Yamaha I purchased years before from the money I made delivering newspapers. I truly thought I might be able to run with my heroes, playing college coffee houses would surely put me on the road to Madison Square Garden.

I was delusional. But—stealing a line from Hemingway—isn’t it pretty to think so.

That old guitar now sits in my shed, my writing spot, leaning against the wall. More than forty years old, and I still have it, blemishes and all. I purchased a new acoustic a few years ago, but that Yamaha is my heart and soul. Recently, after a long absence from it, I placed the guitar on my lap, my fingers in the G chord position, and I strummed away. Out of tune. Badly. The strings old. But I managed to rediscover the notes and strum again. The sweet sound was still there, the echoes of late nights in lounges and bars, all those parties where I was urged on to play “that Stills song” or a little early Fogelberg or the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” Or, “play that song you wrote,” someone in the crowd would call out. Songs. Songs. Songs. All of them played on this guitar. Hundreds, still resonating in its wooden body, soaked forever in the grain.

Someone at a college party sometime long ago as a kind of game to play, asked, “If you could choose three songs to describe your life until now, what would they be?”

Three songs. That’s not enough to tell the story of a life, I thought. But naming only “three” does make one hone in on what is the core essence of a life so far. It makes one consider only the most pertinent chapters, the ones that have truly shaped you, defined you, the center of who you are, the most significant pieces of you. Defining ourselves is a curious thing. Many times when we are asked who we are, we wind up talking about our careers, our partners or children, or what we have in our homes, or what we plan to do this weekend. I’m a retail manager. I have a three-bedroom house. Two kids. I own a Nissan. I play softball on Saturdays. It’s easier that way. But it limits our fullness. We are far more than these things. So maybe one better way to help us define a life is through music—three great songs.

I thought of this as I finger-picked, and re-tuned, and finger-picked again, and remembered the scratches and the nicks on the guitar’s body, noticed the discolored tuner keys and the guitar’s black fretboard worn now to the natural wood.

When I was playing this six-string in front of crowds, a young dreamer, my three chosen songs certainly would have been different than the ones I would choice today. So many more songs to consider. I don’t remember what songs were on my list when that question was first asked. But now? What songs, now?

“Ch-ch-cha-changes,” my wife sang out when I asked the question. We laughed. That Bowie song is most likely relevant for many of us. I’m certain there are others tunes that cover many of our shared lives.

But what are my songs? Maybe if I broke down a list, songs from back in the day, songs from now. By decade. By genre.

“It’s been a long . . . time . . . comin’. It’s goin’ to be a long . . . time gone,” I sang out, trying to remember the chords. David Crosby’s protest anthem seemed appropriate when I first learned it years before. Maybe not now. Or maybe it still was. I was, in many ways, still that angry young man and the world was still a wreck.

What songs would now make my final three?

“In My Life.”

“Under Pressure.”

“Baba O’Riley.”

“A Case of You.”

“Like a Rolling Stone.”

“Working Class Hero.”

“The Boxer.”

“Let it Be.”

“Gimme Shelter”

And there are all those obscure songs, the ones from artists under the radar. Lots of them from then and now.

But wait. I’m doing this all wrong. I’m making a list of my favorite songs. Not the songs that define. That’s quite different. It was then that another song came to me, a song I have always liked, but not one of my ultimate favorites, necessarily. It might make the top-25 if I had to categorize. Certainly a song that has rung true, defined a lot of my life, I believed, from childhood to teen years to young man to husband to husband again to teacher to writer to friend to father. A song by a band I liked, but maybe had not loved. Still, that song, yes, that song was spot on.

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

Bono called it “an anthem of doubt more than faith.” And that was it. A seeker. That’s what I have always been in some way or another. Sometimes finding, but always—always seeking, searching, looking for something just out of reach.

With the Yamaha still on my lap, I knocked around, searching for the chords to the song, and decided to let the the other two defining melodies and lyrics come at another time, maybe when I would return to the old guitar with a clear head, without the nostalgia of all the times I had held this six-string in my hands. Just keep coming back to this guitar, I told myself. That’s where the answers will be; that’s where you’ll realize the songs that define you.

Maybe. Maybe that would happen. And if not, well, isn’t it pretty to think so.

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David W. Berner is the author of a memoir about a young man’s dream of becoming a singer-songwriter and how our dreams forever shape us. October Song was published in 2017 by Roundfire Books, UK. It was named a memoir finalist in the 2017 American Book Fest Awards.