Quarantine Black

(Noah Silliman / Unsplash) 

We are nearly five months out from our initial quarantine warnings and things are, for a great many people, predictably and laughably bad. The internal itch to return to normal has taken over the rational thinking parts of a great many of the population and so...here we are. I saw a meme the other day that said (paraphrasing) that basically, with the handling of all this, the US is the Florida of the entire planet. I hated to laugh, but it's true. We're appearing as the perfectly idiotic representation of how other countries tend to view us: selfish, ignorant, uncaring. Is anyone really surprised by this? I know I'm not. Disappointed, sure, but definitely not surprised. 

To fill up my free time, I've done what others have and found little projects to complete. I continue to go to the gym every day for my allotted hour. But I recently pulled my bass guitar out of storage. It had been out of commission for so long that the protective foam from inside the case had come off and kind of became melded to the base and the strings and it was basically just a mess. I spent a few hours one night removing all the foam and the strings and gave the old axe a serious deep clean. 

In the process, the nut just below the headstock came out. Luckily in one piece, but now I needed to glue it back down. So, I went to a local instrument shop, bought strings and guitar picks and made sure that using some kind of superglue (rather than something more specific) was an okay option. When I got home, I laid everything out on my coffee table and got ready to work. 

It's important to understand that this was the first time I'd ever really done any serious repair work on my guitar in the entire history of owning it. I know it played with some serious fret noise previously, but I assumed that was because of the apparently loose nut. Now that I had super glue, I could fix that small problem. 

I cleaned out the divot between headstock and fretboard, layered in some of the super glue and placed the nut back in. Believing I'd put the nut in the wrong way, I pulled it back out, flipped it around, and then pressed it hard back into the divot against the glue that had not yet set. 

I waited for 10 minutes and then checked the nut and whether it was in a moveable state; it was not. Feeling super pleased with myself, I began stringing the lowest E string and found that my dumbass had put the nut in the right way the first time, so it was currently glued in the wrong way, making it impossible to restring. 

To say that I was sufficiently pissed at myself is about right. I'm not entirely sure where the doubt came from, but it led directly to the mistake. Using some white vinegar, I got some of the outside glue to loosen a bit, but not enough. I eventually had to just pry the nut out of the divot and order a new one. And yes, it had to be removed in pieces because the nut broke in two places. I expected this as I started working, unfortunately. 

Not an ideal situation by any means, but certainly not the end of the world either. I ordered another nut and waited while it arrived, hoping it would be a perfect fit. It was not, but it worked and continues to work and so, at least for now, I have a bass guitar to noodle on during the quiet times when nothing else seems to be coming creatively. When I first went cleaned the bass, I posted it up on Instagram, along with a history of where that bass had been and some of the kinds of gigs that had been played with it strapped across my chest. 

"I bought this bass guitar in 1994, a year before I moved to Kansas City. In 1995, I joined a band (called Astropop) that ended up playing some pretty decent pop punk until I left for college in 1997. The last gig I played, with both the band and this bass guitar, was a house party that got broken up by C.O.P.S. the TV show. It was an amazing summer by all accounts. 

I took this bass with me to college; it came home with me when I flunked out. It remained a staple in my life, even when I turned to DJing. And then I left it, inadvertently, in the hands of a dear friend while I headed off to the West Coast in 2009. I did not see it again until tonight (July 16th). 

I moved into this new place in March. My friend bought the guitar over a few weeks ago, having held onto it for over a decade. Heat and time caused the protective foam inside the case to meld to the old strings, themselves stretched taut across a noisy fretboard that has been badly in need of TLC since well before my jaunt out west. 

I spent a couple hours tonight unthreading the strings, removing the crumbling, sticky foam, and scrubbing away the residue of stickers that fell off ages ago. I wanted to play it tonight, but it wasn't meant to be. I can't bear to part with it, but I think it may be time to buy a new one. I've been anxious to noodle again for a while." 

Like anything, proper maintenance and attention will protect the things you love, or once loved and still hold a fondness for. This just requires time and focus on your part. This often requires a very minimal amount of effort while other instances require a great deal of effort and time. 

I'm currently at a friend's house. We are trying to put our weekly Sunday morning "breakfast and writing session" in order to get him back to focusing on his work and to jumpstart mine again, which remains elusive (though I've written this whole post in a single sitting and I got about 500 words knocked out on an old piece before starting this one). 

This is all to say we're in a strange moment in world history right now. Some say to pick up a hobby (which many have done) and others say that it's fine not to because of the heaviness of current events. I dislike what this has all done to my creativity, but the only thing I can do is continue on, pushing through my work day and my time in the gym and hopefully focus on finishing the next book. It's important to not lose sight of the goals, even if you've lost sight of some of the mile markers that pop up along the way there. 

I think we should plan for some long-haul aspects to life for the next year or so. I don't imagine that with winter (ie, flu season) coming that a lot of this will get better. I don't expect to be working in my office again until at least next May, which is a weird thing to say considering that's nearly a full year away. It's just a gut feeling, mostly because I don't think we're paying this thing enough attention and we're not properly maintaining. 

Again, just a guess. I hope I'm wrong. At the very least, we have whiskey and we have music and as long as both of those exist, we should be okay for awhile. 

(1,493)