Last month, my wife Robyn and I went to a concert in Washington as an anniversary celebration. My wife has a thing for aging rock and roll groups, so we went to see Journey, the Doobie Brothers and Dave Mason, all big stars in my day. I am a little on the fence about going to these things, most of the musicians just don’t hit their notes the way they used to although they can still play their instruments really really well. Which brings me to this week’s letter to you all. The lead guitarist for the group Journey is Neal Schon, the only original member of the band and he is a great guitar player who can play very fast. In fact he played so fast with so many embellishments, that I could not actually follow the melody track he was trying to play and I knew what it was supposed to sound like. As I was listening, I was reminded of an NPR segment I heard several years ago about a guitar camp where people could go to learn from some of the great guitar players of years gone by. One of the instructors remarked that his biggest challenge was to get his students to slow down and instead of playing a million notes just ok, to play fewer notes but with perfection. It is a perfect example of how we try to be sometimes, continually going faster and faster but becoming less and less effective with each next step as if we can outrun our imperfections. Perhaps we should step back on occasion and see how fast we can go well, instead of seeing how well we can go fast.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Ed
