Broken Guitar Strings

Often when I'm working on something, I will be struck with the thought that I need something. Maybe it's a tool, or an implement, or a doo-dad, or a garnishment...most of the time I have no idea what it is. So I start rummaging through my studio shelves, boxes, and bins. And when I can't find it there, I take my search into the yurt. A little mantra begins in my brain, "I need something...some...thing..." and I will stand in one spot and rotate around and around carefully looking everything over. What I'm hoping is that I will either see the thing I need or I'll see the thing that will inpire me to know what I need.

If I still haven't found it, I begin to wander. All too often, this walk will take me through the kitchen, where I happen across the cookie that I didn't know I needed!!! But it helps me look! Sometimes this walk carries me outside, wandering through my yard, and through the tool shed, and up the hill to old abandoned piles of junk. As a child, this same phenomena kept me busy for hours lost in my Grandmother's attic boxes of old jewelry, curtains, and decades of collected cool stuff. Later I turned the curtains into funkadelic clothes, and the beads became new jewlery suitable for 80's fashion.

Ok, so here's what happened. I was totally in the middle of one of these moments awhile ago. But as soon as I stepped into the yurt, I saw it laying on the floor!! A broken guitar string! I picked it up, played with it in my hands and declared excitedly "this is it!!". I love being married to a musician!! "I need more of these!" I said desperately. Daniel looked up at me, squinting...like he was debating whether or not he was going to ask...he must have decided against it, because he didn't ask.
I dug through all of his music junk and found a handful of them. Each one beautifully unique. A broken guitar string, that has been played and tuned past it's point of endurance is something to be reckoned with. It is stubborn, sharp, and completely impossible to discipline. They remind me of a slinky I had as a kid, that I abused to the point it resembled a tangled sculpture. I began a new love affair. "You must have more" I lamented. Afterall, he has a guitar, a banjo, a dulcimer, a strumstick, and a tenor guitar!! He said that he had some old Mandolin strings that I could have (he sold his beautiful mandolin years ago to help fund our move to New Mexico). I explained that new strings just weren't the same! They don't have the personality I need! A new string is just a piece of wire!

My beloved husband looked me sternly in the eye and said that he absolutely would NOT break his strings intentionally for me!! "Of course not!" I replied, "I would never ask you to do that". But just between you and me...secretly...I was a breath away from begging him to do just that very thing!!