While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Dust collects on wood that once shimmered and conjured sweet sounds from my stroking fingers. My guitar has grown tired and bears the scars of half a century of lifting peoples’ hearts with song. Now it sits in silence, waiting for my embrace and those stroking fingers, as the weeks turn into months.

Rust begins to dull my once nimble fingers that knew the art of Albeniz and Bach, and brought life to a thousand songs that I sung for their beauty and for the dreams they awoke. I would sit with this guitar for hours each day, teaching my fingers to find the music and and coax the loveliest of sounds from its shining, scented wood. But I have changed: the will to play has faded. We have aged in harmony and both show the scars of time, and the music only lives among the jumbled memories about a young, roving musician.

I wonder where the will to play has gone? What has turned the drive to practise, learn and play more music into apathy? How can I let my guitar gather dust and quietly weep while I write words, and let the time pass quietly?

Perhaps I’m afraid that the sound will never again be as beautiful.