The Guitarist

or why I travel alone

I saw the poster on the old stone walls. Concerto de Musica de la Guittarista Classica. Miercoles. 6pm. La Bibioloteca. In a week of wandering and writing here in San Miguel de Allende, I have made no plans. I have a list of things to see and do, but I’m mostly here to write and walk and listen and look.

He was young, probably early 30s. Long black hair, partially tied up in a bun with the rest laying on his shoulder. Beautifully soft blue humble eyes. A long gentle nose. He wore a loose white linen shirt and kept re-rolling the right arm up to his elbow as it fell back. The space was a long cavern, painted from floor to arched ceiling with war scenes of fleshy naked soldiers and a king with a broad chest plate of mosaic gold. Just a small stage. No microphones. There were only about 25 of us at most.

He had been slowly walking the space before it was time for him to perform. Casual. Two guitar cases and a chair. He looked to his phone and walked to the chair, taking one guitar out of the case, sitting down, laying it string side down on his lap and softly spoke to us in words I did not understand. Directing us, he took a deep breath in, raising his palms up, then out, lowering his palms and I understood he was inviting us into the space with him. We breathed together and I thought I’d never seen this done before any kind of show and it was a beautiful way to begin. I’d done it for myself, the performer, but never made it part of the show. To allow the audience to transform with the player.

Without saying anything else, he picked up his guitar like an infant, and placed his long fingers over the gut strings and began Satie’s “Gymnopedie.” It seemed slower than I’d ever heard it played on piano. It was an incantation. A prayer. There was so much space, holding the dissonant chord, stretching his fingers, intently plucking the string with his nail and, after what seemed like forever, moving his fingers to land on the consonance. I held my breath until the last note and then exhaled as we applauded. The older couple in front of us began the applause enthusiastically. The man had a hearing aid and called out “Brava! Brava!” and the guitarist bowed his head with reverence that could be mistaken for apology.

I don’t remember the names of any of the pieces or composers. There was a flamenco like explosion of a piece. There was a three part sonata by a Cincinnati-born composer with a heartbreaking melody. I wished I had written the name down. He played the melody on the A string and it was a brave lilting line I’d like to use in my own work. I wanted to catch that interval, the one that seemed to break my heart. At one point, he reached over his resting thumb for a chord, a Twister game like move where you reach over your partner’s thigh to land on the red dot. It was a dangerous music and unexpected each time he did it.

His gift was dynamics. In the flourish of the flamenco, he’d miss notes, one string was slightly out of tune, it wasn’t perfect. But his dynamics were masterful. I couldn’t believe how pianissimo the note could be and still take up space, the note ringing as he let it just be. So much stillness.

After the concert, I thanked him and introduced myself to him as a songwriter from Nashville. He asked me if I wrote country music and I laughed and said I am a folk singer and he smiled. This week I am grateful that I know enough Spanish to get by in a simple conversation. I am here to write and walk. I am sheepishly working on a novel or novella, I’m not sure, and it feels pedantic and ugly as it comes out. I’m just trying to write the scene and I realize I’m not very descriptive yet. I’ve been writing for a few hours each day while here, getting out around 1500 words a day on the novel. I’ve written a few poems. I don’t know why I’m writing a novel. Maybe just to say I wrote a novel. Fiction is daunting to me so I thought I’d try it and write a shitty novel.

When I was young, living in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, part of my dream was to be a writer and to spend time in cafes in cities drinking coffee and writing. I did that when I first moved to NYC in a cafe in the West Village and that’s where my novel begins. I am in San Miguel de Allende spending time at cafes doing the thing I idealized. I’m still following that dream and I’m in my 50s.

This morning on the rooftop terrace of this casita where I am staying for the week, looking out over the town and the Parroquia’s spires and the mountains in the distance, I had the thought that I’m very happy. Not that I’ve landed anywhere. But that maybe who I am now, inside and out, is exactly who I knew I would be back then, the young pre-teen dreaming of cafes and poetry. Maybe I just had to have patience the whole time to make it to 57 and really find out I was here all along.