Perennial Music

Many years ago, I chanced to meet a really great guy. He was sitting in his living room, strumming a guitar. He was blonde, and he wore a white cotton shirt and jeans. That sight is as vivid today as it was 31 years ago.

About the guitar: we started seeing each other. He introduced me to guitar music. Notably, a guitarist whose name was not the least bit familiar to me; I was ignorant of rock music, of guitars, of anything but classical music. There was a particular guitarist whose name kept surfacing in our "playlist". I assumed it was some Aussie musician, from somewhere deep out in the Outback.

A few years later, this cute surfie guy with an accent and I exchanged vows, and were pronounced Man and Wife.

We still enjoyed guitar music. And that one guitarist kept coming up in our "playlist".

Years later...maybe years and years later, I found out that this guitarist is from MUSKOGEE OKLAHOMA. Leo Kottke is NOT an Aussie. He is an Okie. Big difference here, people.

That Spouse o' Mine had a big laugh over that. He always knew Leo Kottke grew up in Oklahoma.

Fast forward now, to our having a son, and he is now in his twenties. He is a guitarist. Imagine that. When he came home from university this summer, he was playing a wonderful song that got stuck in my head:

In Christ There is no East or West

The arrangement is from John Flahey, but this recording is Muskogee's own Leo Kottke.

And now? That Spouse o' Mine is in the living room this evening, playing the same song on his guitar...

Just like lavender and jasmine, the guitar music comes back to me each season of my life.