Guitar Lessons Chapter 8: Step Zero
The next excerpt from a novel in progress
I drove to Teacher’s house for my first lesson and knocked on the front door. My guitar was in a soft case strapped on my back.
Immediately the door opened. “Come in,” Teacher said, smiling. “Today we begin at the beginning.”
“Listening to street sounds wasn’t the first lesson?” I asked.
Teacher waved his right hand, dismissing the comment at once. “That was merely a test,” he said. “It was a way for me to gauge your capacity, your seriousness, your intention to continue with me. Today we formally begin. Of course, it’s essential for you to continue listening in the way I explained. But today we start at the true beginning, before step one. Today we do step zero.”
He gestured toward a hallway leading away from the front door to his teaching studio. I followed Teacher there.
The studio was filled with windows but otherwise sparsely furnished: bare white walls and a hardwood floor. In the center of the room were two wooden folding chairs, a small guitar amp, a music stand, and a small desk.
The room was circular — a large addition to the house. I asked Teacher whether the dimensions of the room had any meaning. He said something about modeling the design of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid, but it was probably a joke. I never got a straight answer.
And yet to enter the studio was in itself an instruction. Immediately I saw that it was a place set apart, a sanctuary. I looked around and felt a wave of nothingness wash over me. The space yearned to be filled with a presence that I simply could not provide.
Teacher bent slightly forward at the waist, extending a hand toward one of the chairs. This was my cue to take a seat. I did, and started to unzip my guitar bag.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Teacher. “Before we do anything with the guitar, we practice just sitting and doing nothing.”
I thought that he was joking. “Another guitar lesson with no guitar,” I said. “When do we actually play some music?”
“You're not ready yet,” he said. “This comes first.”
And so the two of us sat there, saying nothing, eyes closed, for what seemed like eternity.
Finally, Teacher spoke. “To do nothing is already a great accomplishment. If we cannot command ourselves to sit quietly for half-an-hour, then how can we command ourselves to play the guitar — or do anything else, for that matter?”
He paused there, letting his words linger between us.
“Besides,” Teacher added, “just sitting here was something you didn’t expect. You expected to pull out your guitar and play, and sitting in silence interrupted your habitual response. This, too, is essential to notice. It reveals that you are nothing but a bundle of unconscious habits. Your behavior unfolds without conscious awareness. Everything just happens, just as it snows or it gets cold. You do not act. It acts."
In a different setting, I might have taken offense at such words. But in that hallowed studio with Teacher, a stern but salutary presence, I suddenly realized: These were exactly the things that I wanted to learn.
And so that was my practice at home for the next week: one half-hour of silent sitting every day. I didn’t touch a guitar until I'd done this. And when I finally pulled one out of its case and cradled it in my arms to play, it felt like a beneficent stranger. The instrument was new to me, and I could begin again.
My readiness soon coalesced into a mass of self-doubt, however. I confessed this at our next lesson.
“What happens next?” I asked. “Where do we begin? How do I know that I’m even ready to study with you?”
“Where to begin?” Teacher asked. “Are you ready? Those questions are already answered. You are exactly where you need to be. Everything that you’ve ever thought, felt, and done has prepared you to work with me. Whatever your current capacities are, we will work them. Nothing else is required. We begin where you are.”
I sighed. "I don’t know. Something’s missing. Perhaps this is just not meant to be. Maybe our meeting was simply an accident.”
"An accident? No. The work that we are about to do arises under certain conditions, and these conditions come and go. Right now they happen to be present, and they involve you and me. You cannot control the conditions, but you can recognize them. I saw, and I expected your call.”
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears?”
“Teachers appear, yes, but they might be morons or thieves. Discernment is everything. The mark of a true teacher is the capacity to work with an absolute beginner, the person who knows nothing. Very few are capable of this.”
I stared at Teacher. This was new to me.
“Begin where you are,” Teacher said, “and then every day, begin again.”
I like and need to hear the phrase "begin where you are and then every day begin again"
4:33 IYKYK - as the kids say 😁