While My Guitar Gently Sweeps

I remember as kids, my brothers and I would pretend to be all sorts of people or legends. Armed with some raffia string as rope, and his schoolbag as haversack, Jeremy would take on the role of brave adventurer, dragging us younger ones around the garden on exploratory trails and making feeble attempts at climbing the rambutan tree. Another time, he decided to be a deejay and assigned Andrew and I as back-up chorus while he came up with corny intros and jingles to songs – all recorded on a cassette like an actual demo tape. And of course, which kid never dreamt of being a rock superstar?

All you needed was props or just a wild imagination. We had three choices:
1. air guitar
2. badminton or tennis racket
3. broom
Mine was usually the latter since it’s more likely you’d find me daydreaming while doing household chores, and I was never really the sporty type. Lidi brooms served best cos you could actually strum ‘em lidi sticks.

I’m turning thirty soon, very soon, yet I feel I never really left my crazy, clueless adolescent days behind. Either that or I’m suffering from a very early onset of the mid-age crisis. I wanna be a rock-guitar-legend! The next Ratu Rock. Malaysia’s answer to Avril Lavigne.

I pathetically whined to Ben about how, growing up, I was forced to take piano lessons just cos I was a girl, when it was glaringly evident that I had such bad sense of coordination that I couldn’t even get my fingers to play Chopsticks. My parents should have realised that I wasn’t your typical princess in a pink tutu.

Instead of ballet lessons, I took Taekwondo. Instead of masak-masak, I had to engage in combat and guerrilla tactics with my brothers and the Shori boys, armed with mighty ping pong bats. After eight whole years of torturous piano lessons (not just for me but the teachers), I was still only in Grade 4! My dad finally said these exact words, Getting you to play even one song on the piano is like FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE.

Years went by and my brothers went for guitar lessons. I couldn't cos I had wasted eight good years on an instrument I could never conquer. So now I just play the radio.

I remember how I used to sit in my brothers’ room and listen and watch in envy as Jeremy showed off his guitar skills. He even taught me to strum a few chords, the basic chords for Every Rose Has Its Thorn. But that’s as far as my “guitar-rocker-dreams” went. Then Andrew got an electric guitar. Man! Lagi jealous.

The worst part is, I hardly ever see him pick it up. So it just sits there in the room, all glossy and black and white, next to the amp that collects just as much dust. He’s got guitar tabs of some of the best rock songs all over the place, but I’ve never once heard him really goreng the guitar. Sometimes I’d annoy him and go, Hey Drew, play the intro to Stairway to Heaven lah. . . Just once lah. . . But he wouldn’t budge. Sigh.

Some of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard are from a guitar (No, the guitar doesn’t speak to me… I’m not that corny). I’m not talking about so-called romantic guitar scores like Extreme’s More Than Words or something similar from Firehouse.

I mean REAL sexy. All the strumming, picking, bending, sliding, muting, inversions, distortion… The power goreng bits from Metallica’s One and Fade to Black. U2’s Without or Without You and Mysterious Ways. The intros to The Freshmen, One Last Breath, The Reason. . . Songs like Creep, Glycerine, Come As You Are. . . Lots of stuff from Deep Purple. . .

So as some of you dream of being rich or successful or thin or popular, you’ll find me lost in the clouds playing some of the best guitar riffs ever heard.

On air guitar or broom, of course.