When You Should Pick Up the Guitar But Don't....

 My resonator guitar was leaning on a stand in it's spot in the living room. Cathy's guitar also has a spot in the living room on a stand. The idea is that when creativity strikes instruments are handy and you grab one up and create. It's not always that smooth a process because I played a gig in October using this guitar and had not picked it up since. I played other guitars plenty. I played electric guitar in my room, bass guitar at church for services, a couple of funerals and weddings and of course tuba for a civic band concert, and several Drum and Tuba Christmas gigs. Yesterday I picked the resonator from it's stand, removed the stick on pickup and cord I use when needing to electrify it and said to myself, "self, you need to play something on this." I didn't and then that night I had this dream. 

In the dream I rode a bicycle on an East Texas farm road or isolated state highway shaded by tall pines. I turned on a dirt driveway and went through a cattle pasture gate and followed a rutted track to a small white frame house. I was expecting a party but there were no cars signaling the presence of people and I wondered where everyone was. I entered the house to find a room full of people sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Men and women slept together and some people slept on singles by themselves. I thought to leave but they invited me in and everyone rose from bed. They were all hippies, men with beards and shaggy hair, barefoot women with waist length straight hair, long dresses and plain cotton tops. 

As they got around neighbors, men, women and children from a house next door walked across an open field to join us. On a small rise of ground my late friend Gary, a bandana around his head sat playing his drums. As I think about it there may have been other deceased friends in the dream, all gone about the time cell phones began their rise to prominence and before Standley cups were such a thing.   

Here's Gary at the drums.       

In the living room of the old house people began setting up to play music. I expected Gary to bring in the drums but some other guy brought in a child sized set and put it up in a corner. While people were deciding who would stand where I sat down on my amp which had magically appeared but I did not have a guitar. I thought if I leave now on the bicycle I can go get my guitar and return by automobile but if I stay for the jam I'll be riding the bike home in the dark. 

This situation never concluded because I woke up to a windy storm. The power was out. I could hear high gusts of wind dancing the chimes on the porch. Those chimes are tuned to an E Major chord which is the very heart of rock and roll. Mother Nature played random never to be repeated arpeggios with the notes on the chimes and I though I heard snippets of "Rumble," "Smokestack Lightening," and "That's All Right Mama." Rain spattered across the metal roof of my house saying, "Wake Up Little Susie!" Get that guitar off the stand!