It was almost 20 years ago to the day that I agreed to meet my guitar teacher at a local cemetery! I thought it was a tad odd, but I was really into Ozzy at the time and thought  communing with the dead might give me some musical insight.

I was wrong! In fact (pinkie held to lips in a Dr Evil fashion) . . .

I was DEAD WRONG!

I arrived at the agreed upon time as leaves were falling against a dark, dreary sky.

I saw Steve motioning to me from a distance to come join him at one particular grave.

Time out: After watching 4 seasons of The Walking Dead I would never agree to this today. Could you imagine if the Zombie Apocalypse went down while I was in the freakin cemetery? Yeah . . . Not bueno but any who . . .

Steve was visibly upset and he sort of took a little while to get to the point which kind of also freaked me out a bit. Plus I had a date with the person who eventually became “Mrs Uncle Paul” so I was thinking “Date with hot girlfriend vs cemetery with creepy guitar teacher?”

He told me that he thought I was a decent guitar play (and well he should after 2 years of paying the mofo) He also told me that each of us has a certain amount of music that we are able to play in our lifetime.

Time Out: If you’re like me, you kind of see where this is going but not so fast. Keep reading!

He told me that he once knew a really gifted guitarist who was destined for fame and fortune.

He was a nice kid but he sort of took it for granted.

He had great ideas and wrote beautiful music but kept it to himself.

Steve tried to encourage him but the kid would always tell him “someday” or whatever the hell the 17 year old equivalent of that is.

Then Steve pointed down at the grave and it was of a young 18 year old, who died way too soon.

In an emotional voice, Steve told me that he went to the grave with his music still in his head and shook his head and told me how much I would have loved his music.

He paused and looked around and motioned to the endless rows of tombstones.

Every one of these people still had some “music” left in them.

By now I’m like “Dude, I’m 21 years old why are you laying this on me?”

Actually, I never said that . . .

I was too teared up to say anything!

We walked back to Steve’s car.

He rolled down the window and told me . . .

“Play your music Castain. Your job is to leave with nothing still in your head”

Life sort of took me down a different path after that.

My father died a year later. I got married, started a business and went broke;

You know, pretty standard stuff 

But I did finally grow up enough to realize that Steve wasn’t really talking about music.

Peace!

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