I started guitar lessons when I was maybe eleven years old. Saturday mornings I would go to a classroom in the neighbouring town and sit on an old slanting desk with my feet on the benches in front (we couldn’t fit into the desks with our guitars, and I think the teacher enjoyed the bohemian vibe of this arrangement). The school was more beautiful than my own and visiting it felt slightly voyeuristic.
The guitar I used is my father’s—heavy, deep, requiring fair strength to hold down the strings. My dad pulled it out of a closet and strung it before my first lesson, then played a competent, booming rendition of "Rocky Racoon", something I had never seen him do before, nor since. The teacher would tune it before each class, then strum it vigorously and exclaim: ‘I love the sound of the old ones!’ But I sort of resented the guitar and how difficult it was to play.
We learned chords and songs and a little fingerpicking. The Beatles, Elvis, 4 Non Blondes (it was the mid-‘90s). Nothing I particularly wanted to learn but, in retrospect, nice, fun songs. I was capable enough but barely practiced at home. I didn’t like the pain and the callouses, and there was quite a lot of pain. But throughout those few years of lessons and into my teens I continued playing just enough to keep my hand in. Outside the lessons I learned bar chords and Nirvana songs, found tab websites, becoming intermittently enthusiastic about attempting songs I loved. I remember after my last lesson, after three years in which I can barely claim to have progressed, one of the other boys asked what my next step was going to be. I didn’t understand what he meant. We were finished. He wanted to play guitar in an orchestra. I wanted to strum Radiohead in my bedroom.
What I could never do was sing along. I could sing. I could play guitar. Doing both was like trying to rub my belly and pat my head simultaneously. No matter how comfortable I became with simple chord songs, as soon as I opened my mouth my voice would come out in the wrong octave, my fingers would fumble simple transitions. I watched friends begin to play and then to sing along almost immediately. As soon as their fingers could perform. I tried to explain my problem to a few guitar players and they couldn’t really understand me. It was dispiriting. And I didn’t have the skill to play the kind of guitar that needs no accompaniment.
For my twenty-first birthday, my parents offered me €500 (a lot) to choose myself a new guitar. I prevaricated for a year before finding one (I do this over every present), and finally bought myself a very lovely, beautiful-sounding Martin guitar. I brought it along as I moved out, moved around, but never really played it very much. I knew twenty or thirty chords, and could strum them fairly competently, but had great difficulty remembering songs. I would occasionally and intensely practice an Iron & Wine song for a week, then immediately forget it. People still say: ‘Play a song,’ and all I can offer is "Karma Police". The only thing that ever stuck. That and the callouses, which never really soften.
But in recent years I began playing for the kids. I think it was an offshoot from our constant improvising of stories. I would play a random three chord arrangement and sing whatever came to mind. Silly stories, descriptions of the day. Something loosened—instantly and strangely—in front of this unformed audience, and my voice came out clear and true, as good as it ever was without the guitar. Better, even, as the music helped to regulate my pitch. It was different to sing something I was inventing myself, where there was no original I was failing to imitate. And once that block had dissolved, I could even play and sing songs by other people; I have somehow learned to rub my belly and pat my head simultaneously. After twenty years, after thousands of attempts, it kind of happened accidentally, obliquely.
I’ve no real interest in becoming a better guitar player, or singing in front of anybody other than my daughters. I still can’t remember songs, but I love to strum and sing something silly. It’s strange to think I’ve sung hundreds of (bad) songs only once, just as I’ve told thousands of stories that are never to be repeated. I often notice patterns in the way my singing diverges or converges with the instrument, as I intuitively copy the endless guitar music that I listened to in my youth. In those moments I can sense a logic in music and song that is clearly there, that is a fluent language for musicians, but will always remain a mysterious outline to me.