In Memory - 10 years (via type3secretion)
Every time I pick up my guitar — pluck a note, play a chord — I think of Michael Hedges.
Acoustic guitar has always been my favorite instrument, but he redefined it for me in a way that made it more than one instrument and one voice. He turned his guitar into a window that gave the audience/listener a candid look inside his being.
I was lucky enough to see Michael perform 5 times before his passing. The last time was in Seattle just months before he died. My luckiest moment was when my friend Dennis and I saw him at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, and running late we happened upon Michael on the sidewalk outside the building. Seizing the moment I did my best to look him in the eye and connect with this amazing person even if only for 10 seconds.
He could tell I was a fan. He didn’t break eye contact. He was walking alone, probably just having dined and getting in the headspace for his performance. He held my eye contact, and with a giant smile and a genuine hello we had a lifetime of conversations in the span of seconds.
Maybe this is just want I wanted and created for the moment, but I can say with 41 years of living that I’ve yet to experience that profound of a connection with anyone else in a moment’s passing.
I think it was his way of being. And I’m lucky for having witnessed it.
(As an aside, YouTube has quite a few videos of guitarists replicating the Hedges style. Some even technically better, but non imbued with the same sense of self exposure.)
