Guitars and Pens

Guitars and pens. Ok, so what am I writing about now? Well, both of them are tools. Tools to express thoughts and feelings. I’m fortunate that I own both and use them as best as I can to express what I’m thinking on any given day. The English alphabet has just 26 letters. 26 letters and in the right hands these 26 letters have given the world literature. I once had a Jesuit who told me to make sure to only read the classics because there’s ‘not enough time’ to get through all the entire world of literature. This world has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language.
Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in “Lonesome Dove” and had nightmares about slavery in “Beloved” and walked the streets of Dublin in “Ulysses” and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I’ve laughed out loud reading Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinions for their sheer brilliance and have been humbled by the blazing intellect of Charles Krauthammer’s editorials. I’ve introduced myself on air when hosting Tom Sipo’s Hudson Valley Live Radio Show on WKIP to many listeners all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give and taught me how to use words. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language. I’ve been fortunate enough to have found my own voice through my postings here as well as on my Facebook site and behind the microphone at WKIP with the great Tom Sipos, a Hudson Valley, NY treasure.
Find your voice and you’ll find God’s justice.
It’s the same with songs and music. I’ve always thought people would find a lot more pleasure in their routines if they burst into song at significant moments. Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common. Music is the great remember-er of happy times or sad times, of lost loves or just of younger times, especially when one is older and listens, by chance, to a song that invokes an emotion long gone in the mind but lifted to the conscious surface of thought with a knowing smile.
So, guitars, pens and my voice. …..I’m glad I use them to the best of my ability……Thanks for reading.