I realized recently that I’ve been playing guitar for nearly twenty years now. (Have I been alive for twenty years?)

I’m a total hack– never took a lesson. I fake complexity in several nutty “Eastman School of What?” ways, including “alternate tunings.” Although that term implies gravitas that I don’t deserve. I basically just mess around with the pegs until something sounds good to me.

One of these tunings is formal, though: Open D. You tune your lowest and highest string to the note “D,” and when you strum without any fingering, out comes this lovely, resonant, deep thing, like a monk’s chant. It’s a dangerous tuning, though, has a life of its own. One misplaced finger when you do add chords, and the whole thing can fall apart– or, conversely, can take you on a wild musical trip you hadn’t planned at all.

Playing is a lot like that in general. Yeah, you practice, ostensibly so that you “get it right.” And you feel nervous at the idea of “messing up.” But this presupposes that your song is a static, unmoving body of knowledge. The fact is, though, that your “mistakes,” your missed strings, your off-beat strum, can actually end up being more interesting, more captivating, more truthful than what you were trying to do in the first place.

I’m not sure exactly what I’m trying to say here. That standardized tests and other school practices rob our kids of this organic kind of response to the world? That knowledge is just as much what happens in the unrepeatable moment as anything else? That “predictive validity” isn’t really validity at all?

Despite all these brave words, though, I have played for my students over the years exactly twice. But I hope to do something with one class mid-week, and if it flies I’ll unleash it on everyone else after the break. Working on it.