Calluses

Yesterday I wrote about working A/V at our sports arena for the Ohio Valley Conference basketball tournament.  One of the positions I ran was technical director.  A TD is the person who physically pushes all the button on a switcher to send the video and graphics to the big board. 

It’s been a month or so since I’ve run that position and when I set down to get reacquainted the switcher I immediately noticed something very strange:  The buttons all “felt” different.  I couldn’t put my finger on it at first (please don’t pardon the pun).  Turns out, it was all due to calluses.  Calluses on the tips of my fingers from practicing the guitar for the past month (see my previous post on my newest hobby). 

It was the first time that I was conscious of having earned a few calluses on the tips of my fingers.  I thought, Wow, calluses.  cool!

Calluses reminded me of one of my early music heroes:  Harry Chapin.  Chapin was a masterful storyteller and also an outspoken leader on social issues such as working to solve world hunger. 

After concerts, he would stick around and sign as many autographs as he could and talk to you for a little bit.  After one concert I mentioned that I had been working on some sequel lyrics to one of his biggest hits, Taxi.  He said, “That’s great!  Just don’t make any money off it!”

I guess what I’m trying to tie together is that, in the past couple of months, I've chosen to:  take up the guitar . . . which has reawakened my love of rhymes/poetry . . . which has led me to the writing of new “songs” . . . which has led me to start writing this blog up again . . . which as all led to some physical and mental calluses. 

Yes, there is a lot of tenderness and pain at first, but so far it’s been a hell of a ride.

To sum it all up, this is what Harry Chapin once said:

I could tell you that I get asked a lot of times how I can change the world. I've also have been asked a lot of times how I can be a rock and roll singer. And do you see what's on the end of my fingers? Calluses. And what that means is if you're willing to play the guitar night in, night out, for audiences of three people when you're coming up and finding that even your mother says, "Pbbb, it doesn't sound very good." The point is very simple - if you care enough, you can have an impact, because in the long run we're not sure about a prior life or an after life, we're all hoping for that. But what we can do is maximize what we have in this brief flicker of time in the infinity and, and try to milk that and be hungry in a different kind of way, hungry for experience, hungry for meaning. And you can be terribly, terribly effective if you want to be!

Carpe diem Life,
David Kuhn