If you bought Johnny Cash's American Recordings when it was first released in 1994 a little insert came with your CD--a reproduction of six pages of Cash's handwritten memories of his mother's guitar-playing, learning to play guitar himself, and guitars he'd loved and lost to the rigors of life on the road. As a child of 11 or 12, he was inspired by a friend named Jesse Barnhill...
...who lived three miles farther down the road. Jesse had had polio, and his right hand and foot were withered, but with his left hand he made the chords as he beat a perfect rhythym with his tiny right hand. It was an old Gibson flattop, and I thought, if I could play the guitar like that I'd sing on the radio one day.
The final passage has a lot of resonance for me as someone who's often easily distracted by trivial details and who can be overly concerned with doing things a certain way. (The "right" way, of course.) Not Cash--he's focused on what matters, and he makes his way the right way:
When performing, it doesn't matter the brand, the color or the cost. All that matters is that the guitar and I are one. I have to feel that the sound of [the] instrument comes out of me with the song, from inside, from the gut. And it doesn't matter to me that I only know three or four chords. With the left fingers on the frets, the heel of my right hand hugging the body of the guitar, letting just my right thumb lead and drive the rhythym, sometimes it's magic, and I just believe that when it all comes together it's the right way for me to do it. Like Jesse Barnhill did it. Like Mama did it.
Somehow I think Johnny Cash knew more than four chords, but his larger points hits home for me all the same: Don't worry about the right way to play, just play it your way.
Cash's own style is readily apparent is this performance of "Redemption", a song he wrote for "American Recordings":
This whole experience moved me to tears. Thank you, Ed.
"All that matters is that the guitar and I are one." Now there is some spiritual truth. It has always seemed to me that our most powerful journey in life is to peel back the layers of "should" to claim that authentic rhythm, that palsied hand, that truth our body knows that would sing through us if we'd let it.
Posted by: Sage | Oct 11, 2006 at 11:19 PM
Yes, turning away from the voice telling us what we "should" be doing and following a different, deeper impulse is hard but also essential if we're going to do the work we're truly meant to do. (This is a fundamental theme of Tim Gallwey's writing. He calls the "should" voice Self 1 and the deeper impulse Self 2.)
I'm glad it moved you, Sage--Cash can often have that effect on me, all the more so because he wrestled with a lot of demons and had to work hard to distinguish between those deeper impulses that would hurt him and those around him, and those that would allow him to truly express himself.
Posted by: Ed Batista | Oct 12, 2006 at 10:13 AM
It feels to me like your finger is on the pulse of Self 2 with the path you are walking, Ed. I look forward to continuing to learn with and from you along the way.
Posted by: Sage | Oct 13, 2006 at 09:42 PM
I grew up listening to Johnny Cash. I learned how to play only a few songs on guitar. (folsom prison blues,hey porter,give my love to rose,) Right now today 20 years later thats still all I can play. I don't think that I'd ever learned even those few songs If it hadn't been for that unique sound that I was attracted to as a kid.
But just those few songs and his album kept me entertained all these years.LOL. It doesn't take much to entertain a hillbilly.lol
My friends would play their songs and they always ask me to play what I knew. Them knowing what it would always be.
Thanks Johnny, for leaving us entertained.
Tim
Posted by: tim | Jan 07, 2008 at 09:51 PM