a string of bad luck...

well, i'm sad to say that it's been well over 3 months since i've had a guitar lesson. if you recall, i started taking lessons in oct/nov of last year and was really digging it, and my teacher. but i've come to realize that i just don't have much luck when it comes to trying to learn the guitar. i'm really passionate about it, mind you. i've always had fantasies of being a guitarist in a band, just chillin' in the background wowing the crowd with my quick fingers. but alas, i'm starting to think that maybe it's not meant to be... ever.

i've had really bad luck with guitar teachers. my first one was cool, back when i was 12 years old still living in bangladesh. but i don't really remember why or how that relationship ended. perhaps i was shifting phases and moved onto something else, the fickle teenager that i was. 15 years later i decided to get back into it and found a teacher in the yellow pages (maybe that was my problem) who literally lived 2 doors down from my building. i figured it was a match made in heaven. the only problem was that this guy was like, icky-weird. at first he seemed pretty harmless, and i'd go to his apartment once a week. soon i started noticing that he was being a bit of a hypocrite with respect to his time. he charged me a whopping (but common) $32/hour, but i was willing to pay so long as i was learning. on the one hand, he'd give me exactly an hour of his time (no more, no less), but on the other hand, he'd babble endlessly during our sessions about mind numbing topics like parking in our neighborhood and animals, and who the fuck knows what else. slowly i was starting to get annoyed. i figured if he was gonna babble for ten minutes, then i should get an extra ten minutes of lessons, right? wrong. as soon as the hour was up he'd get out of his chair and hastily turn off his amp and put his guitar away and wait for me to give him his money. but, being the non-confrontational person that i am, i dealt with it and concentrated on learning to play.

then one day, i walked into his apartment for a lesson and the door was already ajar but i didn't see him anywhere. so i set myself up for the lesson and waited. soon after, he came out of the bathroom, his long hair still wet, in a wife-beater and boxer shorts. mind you, it was december. and that was really icky. but i was a sport, and continued on with my lesson all the while trying to avoid looking at any part of him other than his face for fear of what might pop out of those nasty boxers. but teaching me in his underwear was apparently not enough because he proceeded to ask me what i thought of his "build". so i mumbled a few sentences together basically to say "it's fine..." all the while gagging and trying not to laugh at his ass.

needless to say that was the last lesson i ever took with him. i made up some excuse about being broke and needing to take a break and that was that.

fast forward 5 years later (wow.. i sure take long breaks, don't i?) and i'm itching to learn again. so i look around different websites and find a girl (family, no less) who teaches out of her house not too far from my place. as many of you know from an earlier post, i was really vibing well with her. i figured this was it, my ticket to really mastering the instrument. i took lessons with her once a week and was learning a lot! but as all good things come to an end, so did this.

fortunately it wasn't an icky-weirdo story, but it was disappointing nonetheless. basically she's stretching herself really thin and at the same time trying to record a new album so she just doesn't have time to teach me (since i'm one of the few students who can't take lessons during weekdays, courtesy of my j.o.b.). but the frustrating part about it all is that she said that she wants to keep me as a student, yet i don't hear from her at all. she doesn't return my calls and doesn't make an effort to try to work me into her schedule. so i'm a tad frustrated and not sure if i'll ever find someone on a long term basis.

maybe i just spent too many years neglecting my desire to learn. maybe i should just give up.

na.. i don't think so. i'm gonna learn to play the damn guitar one of these days...