karma (my new old guitar)

Okay, so. On Cure Touch I post about things that make me happy, and this... this. Takes the cake.

I need to give a little backstory so I can properly explain the nuclear levels of joy this guitar has brought me. Long post ahead, y'all.

I learned to play the guitar in 2011 during a period of out-of-control anxiety. I actually wrote about it in 2012 in this post, on my one-year "guitariversary." (Wow, that post was made ten years ago, huh? Let me just crumble into dust and blow away on the wind...)

Even now, after eleven years of playing, I suck at the guitar. I am not feigning modesty. For whatever reason, I am objectively not good at it. And I've been playing fairly steadily all these years. It's actually kind of incredible a person can plateau so hard.

But I just love playing. I admit I wish I didn't suck at it. But sucking doesn't stop me. Playing helps me with my mental health more than almost anything else in my life. Wellbutrin's great, and yay therapy, but I feel noticeably better directly after I play the guitar. The neurochemical reward is that fast-acting. I love to sing (also not great at that!!) so I really enjoy sitting by myself and singing while strumming my guitar. I like to provide accompaniment when my family has sing-alongs. As long as I can back my family, I don't need to shred.

Here's where this specific guitar comes in: my dad plays. His was the guitar I learned on when I first picked up the hobby. He's been in several bands during my life. I grew up hearing him play.

During the pandemic, the guitar became a major outlet for him. He actually started a business buying, selling, and trading guitars in 2020, and it's what he does day in and day out now that he's retired.

He asked me to take pics of some guitars for him to post and to send to buyers, and kept asking me, so during 2020-2021, I took hundreds of pictures of guitars.

Like. Hundreds and hundreds.

(This isn't remotely all the guitars I photographed. Just smashed this together in Photoshop real quick. He also buys/sells pedals and amps, so I've photographed many of those too.)

I'm relating this and showing this collage because I want to stress that over the past two years, I have interacted with more electric guitars than I can remember. Expensive. Cheap. Every color of the rainbow. Huge ones. Tiny ones. Brand new ones without a single scratch, barely touched. Ancient, well-worn ones only given up because the owner could no longer physically play. Many beautiful ones. Many ugly ones. I have seen them all, and played many of them.

And only once, prior to this guitar, did I feel any kind of interest in one. I don't remember the make anymore, but it was yellow, and one of the first ten or so my dad acquired. I was like, "Oh, I like this one!" and kind of wished he would keep it.

But in all, I've just seen so many guitars at this point. Whenever my dad shows me what he's just acquired, I'm rarely excited by it. I say, "That's gorgeous," or "Sounds good!" and notice if it seems particularly nice. But it doesn't pique my interest like it does his. Guitars are his hyperfixation, not mine. Plus, our guitar tastes are very different. He likes black and red ones. I tend to like ones that are white, or at least a unique color like yellow or purple or copper. I myself predominantly play an acoustic guitar, whereas he prefers electric guitars.

I did buy myself an electric guitar a few years into my guitar journey. (Also posted about it, here.) I played this one a lot less than my acoustic, just because I never felt like plugging it into my amp. I did now and then, but not super often. I liked it and had fun with it, but it wasn't my preferred instrument.

But oh. This guitar.

One of many my dad picked up in a haul. I laid eyes on it and immediately said, "That's my kind of guitar." It's off-white, and like I said, I like white guitars. It wasn't even the only white guitar he'd acquired in that specific haul, though! I picked it up and played it a bit. I enjoyed it. I often do! And then I went about my business again.

Buuuut. I found myself picking it up again the next time I saw it. I played it for about twenty minutes that time, and was like, "I really like this guitar."

I proceeded, then, to pick it up every single dang time I saw it. I'd be on my way to do something else, spot it, and go to play it. My dad walked in on me playing it repeatedly.

(basically me)

For whatever reason, this guitar feels very comfortable for me. I don't know why. It's a nice guitar, and all -- nicer than my mint green Affinity -- but mind you, I've played thousand-dollar guitars with mother-of-pearl inlays and celebrity names stamped on them. I've played guitars that sound nicer than this one. But somehow I just found myself in love with this guitar. It feels like an extension of me when I play it. It's the most comfortable guitar I've ever felt. I feel relaxed and at-home with it.

I suspected it might be pricey, but I decided to ask my dad about his selling price.

"How much for other people? Or for you?" he asked.

"Haha, both," I said. (Family discount? Yes, please.)

"It's probably a $500 guitar," he told me.

Oof, was my thought. But I thought I'd see if he would take my mint green Affinity as a trade and let me make up the remainder of the amount.

Before I could make this offer, he said, "If you want it, it's yours."

I... I almost have to lie down, thinking of that moment. I haven't been that happy since I got Aury, my first Blythe doll. The sheer gut-punch of euphoria! The feeling like I'm flying, and life has just changed for the better for me. The sensation of the sun coming out. My dad just... gave me this guitar. I was in shock and in a way I still am.

He liked it as well and I think he liked the idea of it staying in the family, so I think that's partially why he gave it to me. I also like to think it's karma for the sheer amount of hours I've sunk into doing guitar photography and all its associated emotional labor for him for the last couple of years. I mostly did this work for free.

My dad had put the guitar up for sale already and was astonished it hadn't sold yet. People really like this specific guitar, so he expected to it to sell quickly. I said, "It was meant to be with me. I really feel like this guitar was destined for me."

I have been playing it every day, sometimes three or four times a day, since I got it in late April. I love it so much. Every time I play it, I love it more.

My dad doesn't know much about its history. Often he can tell you about the prior owner and where they got it and how long they had it and why they parted with it. But he got it in a larger haul rather than picking it up individually, so its former life is a mystery. But it's a Fernandes RST-50, made in Japan, and I think it is maybe from the 80s. Looks like the pickups have been switched out. There are nicks and chips and oddities about it that don't really show up in pictures. It's "antique white" but to me it looks kind of like a lemon creme color.

I hope this post doesn't come across as braggy or something. (To whomppsssttt would I even be bragging? I think about three people max read this blog.) I've just historically posted about my guitars here and wanted to do the same for this one. And I wanted to record how I feel about it. Record how I got it and how happy it made me. I want to always remember my dad gifting me this guitar, and how much joy it's brought me. This is the definition of Cure Touch.

You'd be forgiven for assuming the guitar is a major thing my dad and I have in common. From the outside, it looks that way. But between our diverging tastes in aesthetics and music, and his high skill level versus my shockingly low one, it's not. We don't play the guitar together. We don't have a super close relationship. Him just up and giving me this relatively expensive guitar was not a foregone conclusion on my part. Not remotely. And thus it shocked me, and it is incredibly meaningful and special to me that he would do something like that. Like, I was prepared to buy it, haggle with him for it, trade for it.

I love this guitar so much.

I want to take super good care of it, so last week I took it to a local guitar place to have the floating bridge tightened down. Hopefully in the next month or two I'll have them do a full set-up on it. I want this guitar to be with me for years to come.

Off to cry now!

P.S. Is it not WILD how much it looks like the guitar in Wayne's World? I did not realize this until making this post.