Why I "Play" the Guitar

Haven't said much if anything about the guitar lately. Took it up last year - part of the ongoing mid-life crisis. If anything it helps me appreciate music more. When you play it yourself - or in my case, try to play it - you understand a little better when you hear others play it. Even Top-40 stuff sounds more interesting.

Along those lines I found this today,

Though I think I would have always dug this band, [The Kings of Leon - ed.]these days I find I can really hear them,. I am aware of each note; I can feel the separation of the instruments; sense what Caleb and Matthew Followill are doing on their guitars; take it all apart and put it back together; and it’s all due to the few months Jack and I have spend whacking our own geetars.

Over the past couple of years, drawing has done the same for my appreciation for art, focusing my likes but quelling my dislikes, broadening my mind and letting me see what I would have formerly walked past or dismissed. I feel increasingly less intimidated by the heavy intellectualism of a lot of contemporary art and get a lot more pleasure whenever I’m in a museum.

You don’t have to be a musician to love music or an artist to love art or a writer to enjoy a novel, but when you try to make it yourself, even in the most rudimentary way, it enhances what you get out of really great Art. In the end, we are all Artists. Some of us have long hair, greasy fu-manchus, and peg leg jeans while others just back up nine-year-olds.(emphasis mine)

Everyday Matters.