In a parking lot behind the Holiday Inn in Bristol, UK, it is late, and 5 very tired people stumble out of a black van. I’m one of them, and hang back during the check-in process to assess the safety of the van and the gear to be left in it over night. We have very early lobby call to make the flight to Copenhagen and I don’t want to bring all the gear in if we don’t have to. Sitting on some steps some fifty feet away is a woman smoking a cigarette, an aura of hardship in the slight cloud of smoke around her. I pull my guitar out of the van and lean it against my suitcase to bring in to the hotel. I lock up the van and start to gather my stuff when I hear a voice.
“Is it an acoustic?” There is the woman, a few feet away now. “Sorry…?” I say.
“The guitar. Is it an acoustic?”
“Electric,” I say.
“A Fender? “ she asks, and I begin to tell her what I tell everyone who asks about the guitar: made by Joe Yanuziello in Wainfleet, Ontario, an outrageously talented craftsman who I asked to build me “a hammer”, a useful tool that could take the abuse of the road.
“Can I see her?” she asks.
I unzip the bag and hand her the guitar, as I do to everyone who seems interested in it.
“She’s beautiful,” she says, holding the guitar more like one would cradle a baby in order to get a good look, arm extended in front…not like a guitar player.
“Yeah. I asked him to build me a hammer and he built me a beautiful one.”
“Do you love her?”
“We’re learning,“ I say. “It’s been eight years…some players I know have their guitar welded to their hip, you can’t tell where they end and the guitar begins. I wish I could say that was me, but its not, I’m afraid.”
“But its welded to here,” she says pointing to her heart. “I can tell. I could tell when you took it out of the van…you were very kind with her.”
(Earlier in the van when nearing Bristol: I have roots from here on my father’s side. ‘Do you feel your ancestors rumbling?’ Nathalie, The Matriarch of The Nights of Grief and Mystery, asks me. I was too tired to feel any rumbling other than that of the van and a broken heart I’ve been nursing privately. ‘Nah,’ I say dismissively.)
Now I’m thinking this was them rumbling.
“My son would have loved this,” she says, decidedly past tense.
“Do you play?” I ask.
“No, my son did.” Again, past tense.
As I put the guitar back into its’ travel bag, I say “Your son isn’t here anymore.” She shakes her head.
“He hung himself,” she offers…the words themselves suspended in the air along with the image.
Our UK wheel man, Justin, has been standing near the whole time, privy to the quiet back and forth, and he gently inquires as to her son’s name.
“Vincent,” she says, her eyes glued to the guitar bag now. “Six years ago. He was 26.” A pause. “He would have loved this. He would have stood here and talked music with you for hours.”
“I’m Gregory,” I say, reaching out my hand to hers, and hers finding its way into mine, tears gathering in her eyes, and we are close, and somehow intimate and strangers no more, and there is solid ground beneath our feet, and there is Justin watching, and then she is in my arms, and then she is crying. I become aware we have given her our names, but don’t know hers. And she doesn’t offer.
The business of checking in breaks the spell as Charlie comes through the door with a question. She tells Justin he has very kind eyes. She is quite taken with Justin, but turns her attention back to the guitar bag leaning against my suitcase.
“Take care of her,” she tells me. “Never let her go.”
My broken heart whispers…you should’ve taken her advice a long time ago.
I’ve never assigned a gender to my guitar, but I will from now on: she was christened by a broken Mother after midnight behind a Holiday Inn in Bristol, UK.
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Gregory Hoskins 