Johnny Hendrix

I've sworn to myself that before I die, I'll sky dive and play guitar. And so, being the resourceful over-analyst I am, I took an unbelievably simplified guitar class at my summer Christian-camp of choice.

Upon entering the room, I performed my usual routine of finding the most empty piece of wall real-estate and thusly planting my self there on the floor.

Surveying the room revealed a pod of cheerleaders, a brace of Louisiannans, the clan of we-make up-half-of-the-camp Westside Baptist Church members, and myself. My point in saying this is not to highlight my individuality (unfortunately, I'm rather typical), but rather to highlight the individuality of the next guy that walked into the room.

While expectations based on this vague detail may involve such trendy demographics as music-buff or uber-emotional (think black), this fellow was actually his own person. He sat down on the floor beside me and, in an obnoxiously thick accent, announced, "My name's John. I'm from Mississippi. How 'bout you?"

John was a stocky, seemingly dull-witted guy; the kind of guy with a frustrating tendency to strike everyone's last nerve despite having the best of intentions. He was very friendly and had a knack for breaking our class's only rule:

Rule #1: Don't play guitar while teacher is talking.

While under normal circumstances, this would be only a minor annoyance, keep in mind that people who take guitar classes are doing so because they are clueless when it comes the instrument (and southpaw "Johnny Hendrix" was no exception).

As we became familiar with our chords, song time arrived, and we were all ready to play the contempo-praise song "Marvelous Light."

While our teacher was strumming along with his students, he would sing the words to the song, adding in the names of the chords, never breaking away from the tune of the song.

"'G' Into marvelous light I'm running/'C' Out of darkness out of shame 'E minor...'"

Several times through his new song, John decided that less play and more sing was in order, and so put down his guitar. John started singing the song at the top of his lungs, even including the awkwardly harmonic "C", "G" and "E minor" that the teacher was singing.

What makes this amazing rather than rant-worthy is that John sang with a frank spirit of praise rather than one of sarcasm or entertainment. While all week everyone had been annoyed by John, today everyone joined in, sang along with praise, "E minor" and all.

Puppet Shows

Recent re-evaluations have revealed that I, in fact, am a professional puppeteer; an old, lonely, self-loathing puppeteer. While I spend time lurking somewhere above the stage, my shiny marionette dances gaily around the floor, shouting, "Look at all the ignorance!" and acting as the only peice of me that the audience may ever know.

And how I love my marionette. When I indulge myslef with my pseudo-existence through him, I don't think of me as myslf, but rather something more beautiful; something worthy of justifiably making radical statments about the audience and receiving applause afterward. If the puppeteer tried this, he'd be pelted with tomatoes.

It's one of those things that just seems more easily explained metaphorically. The me that you see and hear tends to cry, "Hipocrites!" at the drop of a hat, while the me I have to be stuck with just keeps pushing aside the option of stepping onto the stage himself.

Does the story have a moral?

peace. love. judgement.

I have several friends who I believe desire qualification as modern day hippies (at least in philosophy, I'm not implying the use of illicit substances by any means). They own websites that proclaim the amazing benefits of world peace and wear clothes that set them apart and often times bear some sort of tribute to the Beatles or John Lennon.

But in their natural habitat, they represent completely different ideas. Much as I love my friends (and much is an understatement) I can't support their hipocritical behavior.

"I honestly cant stand [person]"

"So we told her that she was the ugliest..."

"You actually listen to [artist]... and you like it?!"

This to me is as far from love as a person can distance themselves. If we place judgement where compassion, understanding, and a give-it-a-try mindset should be, then how much progress have we made toward making the world a better place? How can we love people and be loved if we spend our time making ourselves feel better by finding others' faults?

I simply play the role of furniture when I'm around these people, so as to avoid such comments being made in my direction. And though I realize that I shouldn't care what others think, anyone who says that hurtful comments aren't quite so hurtful to them is being rather dishonest with themself.

I love these people; they're fun to be around and I don't laugh quite as much when I'm not with them, but I can't shake the feeling that my every move is being critiqued and that as soon as I get out of earshot I'll become a topic of conversation.