Guitar Sad Quotes

There once was a girl who found herself dead. She peered over the ledge of heaven and saw that back on earth her sister missed her too much, was way too sad, so she crossed some paths that would not have crossed, took some moments in her hand shook them up and spilled them like dice over the living world. It worked. The boy with the guitar collided with her sister. "There you go, Len," she whispered. "The rest is up to you.

I'm shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town

I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I'm lost in the music. Until I am the music--notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it's okay because when I'm the music, I'm not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.

She reminds him of every good day he's ever had. Every summer spent in fields of grass. Every sunrise. Every sunset. She tastes like dew and smells like light. And when she speaks, it's like someone slowly plucking the strings of a guitar, a sadly beautiful song starting to play, all his own. And he loves her.

Everything in the world's got a voice; most people don't hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.

Kiss Me Hard Before You Go,Summertime Sadness

He's bent over the strings tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel I should look away but I can't. In fact I'm full on gawking wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive just like he is- and for a split second I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds. Later as he plays and plays as all the fog burns away I think he's right. That's exactly it- I am crazy sad and somewhere deep inside all I want is to fly.

Streets paved with opal sadness, Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy, And jazz.

The guitar's still around me. I slip it off and put it down. I want to feel him. To feel his breath on my neck. The warmth of his skin. To feel something other than sadness. Hold me, I tell him silently. Hold me here. To this place. This life. Make me want you. Want this. Want something. Please

Miaow Consider me. I sit here like Tiberius, inscrutable and grand. I will let "I dare not" wait upon "I would" and bear the twangling of your small guitar because you are my owl and foster me with milk. Why wet my paw? Just keep me in a bag and no one knows the truth. I am familiar with witches and stand a better chance in hell than you for I can dance on hot bricks, leap your height and land on all fours. I am the servant of the Living God. I worship in my way. Look into these slit green stones and follow your reflected lights into the dark. Michel, Duc de Montaigne, knew. You don't play with me. I play with you.

Toward the end of his second decade in the airport, Clark was thinking about how lucky he’d been. Not just the mere fact of survival, which was of course remarkable in and of itself, but to have seen one world end and another begin. And not just to have seen the remembered splendors of the former world, the space shuttles and the electrical grid and the amplified guitars, the computers that could be held in the palm of a hand and the high-speed trains between cities, but to have lived among those wonders for so long. To have dwelt in that spectacular world for fifty-one years of his life. Sometimes he lay awake in Concourse B of the Severn City Airport and thought, “I was there,” and the thought pierced him through with an admixture of sadness and exhilaration.

I’ve had a lot of sucks in life A lot My parents died almost four years ago, right after I turned seven With every day that goes by I remember them less and less Like my mom…I remember that she used to sing. She was always happy, always dancing. Other than what I’ve seen of her in pictures, I don’t really remember what she looks like. Or what she smells like Or what she sounds like And my Dad I remember more things about him, but only because I thought he was the most amazing man in the world. He was smart. He knew the answer to everything. And he was strong. And he played the guitar. I used to love lying in bed at night, listening to the music coming from the living room. I miss that the most. His music. After they died, I went to live with my grandma and grandpaul. Don’t get me wrong…I love my grandparents. But I loved my home even more. It reminded me of them. Of my mom and dad. My brother had just started college the year they died. He knew how much I wanted to be home. He knew how much it meant to me, so he made it happen. I was only seven at the time, so I let him do it. I let him give up his entire life just so I could be home. Just so I wouldn’t be so sad. If I could do it all over again, I would have never let him take me. He deserved a shot, too. A shot at being young. But sometimes when you’re seven, the world isn’t in 3-D. So, I owe a lot to my brother. A lot of ‘thank you’d’ A lot of ‘I’m sorry’s’ A lot of ‘I love you’s’ I owe a lot to you, Will For making the sucks in my life a little less suckier And my sweet? My sweet is right now.

Yeah – Sure I remember Matter of fact it was just last September She still calls it the fall to remember Little Heather when it all came together You remember the first time you met her? She cried when it rained and blamed the weather But inside she strained with suicide letters The kind of cold you couldn’t warm with a sweater Hardly lasted past December She said she was headed down to defeat That’s the last you’d seen and never had dreamed That the same little Heather – It’s who you saw last week In an instant you couldn’t have missed her gleam As she listened she looked like a distant queen With a difference, there for all to see She found a different – A different kind of free

Long after the other voices had dropped away, Sam kept howling, very soft and slow. When he finally fell silent, the night felt dead. Sitting was intolerable. I stood up, paced, clenched and unclenched my hands into fists. Finally I took the guitar that Sam had played and I screamed and smashed it into pieces on Dad's desk.

The cities are full of women falling for the cool loser: the man trafficking in “edgy” so women cut him slack in his more loathsome behaviors. Christ, I know so many, it’s sad. Please accept my flaws (and pay my rent) because I can play guitar! Badly.

I like you too, Zack,” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder, so I could look up at him. “You’ve sort of had me . . . enamored, I guess is the right word . . . since we met.” He laughed. “You were enamored with me?” I nodded. “Yeah, I was. It’s sad, but I was completely enamored with you. I blame your eyes, and your stupid guitar playing. I’m a sucker for a guy with a guitar.” “Don’t forget my kissable lips,” he said, as he kissed my neck, trailing his lips down to my collarbone. I sighed, a long, deep, satisfied sigh.

Happy sadness, sad happiness, the story of my life and loves

After my morning bacon and eggs, I sit on the toilet with my acoustic guitar and make up sad country songs about how annoying I am while I take a big ol’ cry-shit.

I’m glad you aren’t sad about the baby because I’m not either. But I want to be clear that you have options. All the options in the world. And I’ll be here with you, no matter what. I want to come home to the sound of you and Luke laughing. I want to listen to you play the guitar while I cook dinner. I want to leave you Post-it notes for a long time. I don’t want you to feel stuck with me.

When the cities are gone, he thought, and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents and other such shitheads, when the glass-aluminum skyscraper tombs of Phoenix Arizona barely show above the sand dunes, why then, why then, why then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom—goddammit!—herding the feral cattle into box canyons, and gorge on bloody meat and bleeding fucking internal organs, and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon!—by God, yes! Until, he reflected soberly, and bitterly, and sadly, until the next age of ice and iron comes down, and the engineers and the farmers

Remember me Though I have to say goodbye Remember me Don't let it make you cry For even if I'm far away I hold you in my heart I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart Remember me Though I have to travel far Remember me Each time you hear a sad guitar Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be Until you're in my arms again Remember me

With Tommy by his side but Anthony Jr. nowhere to be seen, Anthony cranks out an old 8mm projector, and soon choppy black- and-white images appear on the cream wall capturing a few snapshots from the canyon of their life—that tell nothing, and yet somehow everything. They watch old movies, from 1963, 1952, 1948, 1947—the older, the more raucous the children and parents becoming. This year, because Ingrid isn’t here, Anthony shows them something new. It’s from 1963. A birthday party, this one with happy sound, cake, unlit candles. Anthony is turning twenty. Tatiana is very pregnant with Janie. (“Mommy, look, that’s you in Grammy’s belly!” exclaims Vicky.) Harry toddling around, pursued loudly and relentlessly by Pasha—oh, how in 1999 six children love to see their fathers wild like them, how Mary and Amy love to see their precious husbands small. The delight in the den is abundant. Anthony sits on the patio, bare chested, in swimshorts, one leg draped over the other, playing his guitar, “playing Happy Birthday to myself,” he says now, except it’s not “Happy Birthday.” The joy dims slightly at the sight of their brother, their father so beautiful and whole he hurts their united hearts—and suddenly into the frame, in a mini-dress, walks a tall dark striking woman with endless legs and comes to stand close to Anthony. The camera remains on him because Anthony is singing, while she flicks on her lighter and ignites the candles on his cake; one by one she lights them as he strums his guitar and sings the number one hit of the day, falling into a burning “Ring of Fire ... ” The woman doesn’t look at Anthony, he doesn’t look at her, but in the frame you can see her bare thigh flush against the sole of his bare foot the whole time she lights his twenty candles plus one to grow on. And it burns, burns, burns . . . And when she is done, the camera—which never lies—catches just one microsecond of an exchanged glance before she walks away, just one gram of neutral matter exploding into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT. The reel ends. Next. The budding novelist Rebecca says, “Dad, who was that? Was that Grammy’s friend Vikki?” “Yes,” says Anthony. “That was Grammy’s friend Vikki.” Tak zhivya, bez radosti/bez muki/pomniu ya ushedshiye goda/i tvoi serebryannyiye ruki/v troike yeletevshey navsegda . . . So I live—remembering with sadness all the happy years now gone by, remembering your long and silver arms, forever in the troika that flew by . . . Back

Pegi just recorded "I Don't Want to Talk About," written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who's all over Early Daze, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business with Danny.

The conversation swings from the brothers Bush to the war in Iraq to the emerging rights of Muslim women to postfeminism to current cinema—Mexican, American, European (Giorgio goes spasmodically mad over Bu-ñuel), and back to Mexican again—to the relative superiority of shrimp over any other kind of taco to the excellence of Ana’s paella, to Ana’s childhood, then to Jimena’s, to the changing role of motherhood in a postindustrial world, to sculpture, then painting, then poetry, then baseball, then Jimena’s inexplicable (to Pablo) fondness for American football (she’s a Dallas Cowboys fan) over real (to Pablo) fútbol, to his admittedly adolescent passion for the game, to the trials of adolescence itself and revelations over the loss of virginity and why we refer to it as a loss and now Óscar and Tomás, arms over each other’s shoulders, are chanting poetry and then Giorgio picks up a guitar and starts to play and this is the Juárez that Pablo loves, this is the city of his soul—the poetry, the passionate discussions (Ana makes her counterpoints jabbing her cigarette like a foil; Jimena’s words flow like a gentle wave across beach sand, washing away the words before; Giorgio trills a jazz saxophone while Pablo plays bass—they are a jazz combo of argument), the ideas flowing with the wine and beer, the lilting music in a black night, this is the gentle heartbeat of the Mexico that he adores, the laughter, the subtle perfume of desert flowers that grow in alleys alongside garbage, and now everyone is singing— México, está muy contento, Dando gracias a millares… —and this is his life—this is his city, these are his friends, his beloved friends, these people, and if this is all that there is or will be, it is enough for him, his world, his life, his city, his people, his sad beautiful Juárez… —empezaré de Durango, Torreón y Ciudad de

No,” she said slowly. “No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re sad, that’s all. But the mean reds are horrible. You’re afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don’t know what it is. You’ve had that feeling?” “Quite often. Some people call it angst.” “All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?” “Well, a drink helps.

With his child passed out on the couch, after arrests and drunk tanks and hospitalizations, Lynch, the undertaker and poet and essayist, looked at his dear addicted son with sad but lucid resignation, and he wrote: “I want to remember him the way he was, that bright and beaming boy with the blue eyes and the freckles in the photos, holding the walleye on his grandfather’s dock, or dressed in his first suit for his sister’s grade-school graduation, or sucking his thumb while drawing at the kitchen counter, or playing his first guitar, or posing with the brothers from down the block on his first day of school.

Because of the tragic way that Chris Cornell’s life ended, there’s a propensity to view his story as a tragedy. That would be a mistake. Chris Cornell lived his life to the fullest. He overcame seemingly insurmountable challenges time and time again in the pursuit of a dream too enormous to fathom. He used the tools at his disposal—his one-of-a-kind voice, his guitar, and his imagination—to craft era-defining music that many turned to time and again in moments of sadness, anger, joy, anguish, fear, doubt, and love. He lifted the hearts and minds of countless people from all walks of life on nearly every continent on the planet with his unique and unparalleled artistry. He did what he loved, and along the way created a musical legacy that will endure for generations. Chris Cornell kept his promise.

That evening I was so sad that I didn't know what to do. It was completely impossible to get to sleep. Dad must have understood, because he came up to my room long after he had said good night. He brought his guitar. I didn't say anything. Neither did Dad, who sat on the edge of the bed. But after a while, he cleared his throat and began to play. He played the Trille tune, just like when I was tiny. It's my very own song, and it was Dad who wrote it. When he finished, he said that he'd written a brand-new song for me, called "Sad Son, Sad Dad." "Do you want to hear it, Trille?" I gave a tiny nod. And as the wintry wind swirled around the house and everyone else slept, my dad played "Sad Son, Sad Dad." I almost couldn't see him because it was so dark. I just listened. And suddenly I realized what dads are for.

Dak had a song he didn’t often sing for crowds, but saved for late nights around dying fires, when only the restless and bleary-eyed stuck around to listen. Enid had only heard it a couple of times, but she remembered it and sat up when he played it now. The chorus was about dust in the wind, and how everything would eventually blow away and come to naught. The melody was sad and haunting, a rain of notes plucked on the strings until they faded out, just a lingering vibration through the wood of the guitar. The sound seemed to carry, even after the song ended. “That was really sad,” one of the half dozen left on the patio said, and the words seemed rude somehow. Like after that they should have all just vanished without a word, melting into the night. “I learned it from an old man when I was just a little kid. He said it came from a place called Kansas.” Enid said, “I’ve seen Kansas on a map.” A crinkled atlas in the Haven library had the continent marked up into regions that didn’t mean much these days. “It’s over a thousand miles east of here.

A few years from now, far away from here, a young woman will be sitting on a sofa at a party. Everyone around will be dancing and drinking but his eyes will be glued to the television. It's just a short clip from concert by one of the country's most female performers right now. Her name is Maya Andersson, and the young man has always loved that name. How ordinary it sounds. He's never thought about her accent, has never reflected upon why it sound so familiar to hin, But now he sees her on television and she's singing a song about someone she loved,because it's hit birthday, and on the huge screen behind ger a photograph of him flashes up for moment. She knows no one will really see it, a thousand more images flash past right after it, she just inclided that particular photograph for her own sake. But he man on sofa recognizes it. Because he remembers fingertips and glances. Beer bottles on a worn bar counter and smoke in a silent forest. The way snow feels as it falls on your skin while a boy with sad eyes and a wild heart teaches you to skate. The man on the sofa pack almost nothing. He takes just a light bag and the case containing his bass guitar and travels to the next town on Maya's tour. He elbows past her security guard and almost gets knocked to the floor and he he calls out: "I knew him! I knew Benji! I loved him too!" Maya stops mid-stride. They look each other in the eye and see only him, the boy in the forest, sad and wild. "Do you play?" May asks. "I'm a bass player," he says. From then on he is her bass player. No one plays her songs like he does. No one else cries as much each night.

Come on now, I urged myself, looking at my reflection. Don’t let her ruin this, too. The sight of my red-rimmed eyes made me even more sad and I tried to force a smile, but then my dimples appeared, and they always made me look like her. Or at least back when she used to smile. I hated the way they reminded me of her. I covered them with my index fingers and turned my head sideways, trying to imagine myself without them, wishing I could smooth them out with a touch. If only it were that easy to erase something you didn’t want. I stood pinching the poisonous letter until my breath had calmed and my eyes stopped burning. Then I hurried back to my room and hid it at the bottom of my bag, where I wouldn’t have to think about it any longer. I hadn’t come all this way to keep living this nightmare. In bed, I curled up and tried to focus on the cool breeze that came in through the open window, carrying scents of unfamiliar blossoms and dry grass, and soon I drifted off to the pulsing lullaby of the Midwestern crickets. Ahead lay the road. And the whole world. Two I woke confused, dazzled by a beam of sunlight poking at my eye. Instinctively, I turned around and burrowed my face deeper into the pillow, before I remembered where I was and flew right up. I’m in America! Through the window I could see pastel suburbs and sprawling oak trees, topped by a beckoning blue sky. My head cleared in an instant and I wanted to run outside and explore. But Nathan was still asleep, so instead I padded into the living room and stretched out on the sofa, letting out a gratified exhale. I was free. My eyes drifted over to Nathan’s guitar. I picked it up and ran my fingers over the curved wood. Back home I had a cheap, second-hand acoustic which had served me well in learning the basics. I knew I wasn’t much of a guitarist, but I

Before Julian left, Yoko offered both him and Sean one of John’s guitars. Julian asked for one he had always loved, a black Yamaha inlaid with a pearl dragon. He remembered John playing Sean songs on it. Yoko told him he couldn’t have that one and gave him two others instead, which, sadly, he didn’t recognise and which therefore had no meaning for him. These were the only possessions of John’s Julian was ever given, yet when he returned to the Dakota building on another occasion he saw that Sean had the full use of all John’s musical equipment, including the guitar Julian had wanted.

Superstar" Long ago and oh so far away I fell in love with you before the second show Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear But you're not really here It's just the radio Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby You said you'd be coming back this way again baby Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do Loneliness is such a sad affair And I can hardly wait to be with you again What to say to make you come again Come back to me again And play your sad guitar Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby You said you'd be coming back this way again baby Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do Writer(s): Leon Russell, Bonnie Sheridan. Performed by The Carpenters, Carpenters (1971)

The Colombian from Caramanta sees Jorge Negrete with his guitar, his big sombrero, his pistols, and reacts to the hero in the same way as the little Indian from Tlaxcala, the cholo from Cuzco, the Juan Bimba from Merida. He too longs to have a girlfriend with bottomless eyes and black braids, a spirited horse, a noble guitar full of songs, and a wonderful manly voice to sing them. Jorge Negrete was, in the movies as in life, what millions of American men, poor and sad, alone, without a woman, a horse or songs wished to be.

Sometimes you need to be alone to play guitar

Dirty Thrills has a crazy cool blues-rock sound with wailing guitar riffs and melt-your-panties vocals. The guitarist looks like Colin Farrell, with sad, love-me-till-it-hurts brown eyes, pouty lips, and a mustache that could tickle a girl in all the right places.

She presses play and Andrea listens to the song. A guitar starts playing, then another and then drums; it’s an unusual sound; it seems like rock music but is strange, somewhat gothic and punk. It’s a melodic song, though, and his foot taps the beat without him realizing. A man’s voice, full of sadness, sings the first words:   "When routine bites hard And ambitions are low And resentment rides high But emotions won’t grow And we're changing our ways Taking different roads..."   Andrea knows it! He hears the song arrive from his distant past with a suitcase full of memories. He sees himself as a child, sitting in the living room, his little legs dangling from a chair. His father has just received a new CD from abroad and couldn’t wait to receive it so Gina the caretaker has sent it on to him in Clusone. He’s really excited and tells mom all about it. She’s happy too. Barbara has pigtails and is eating a piece of focaccia with olives, sticking her fingers inside to take them out one by one. She’s tiny, five years old or maybe younger. Andrea sees the CD on the table and wonders what is so special about it. There's a very pale guy on the front, with dark hair and a strange fringe. His mouth is right up to the microphone and everything else is black. It’s written in a language that he can’t read, though he knows that it’s English. His parents are so happy that he decides to take it and have a listen. He snatches the disc and CD player and runs off. He runs very fast...   "Then love, love will tear us apart again" sings Ian Curtis, the voice of Joy Division, his parents’ favorite band. It’s a compilation that came out in 2000, containing a special song, "Love will tear us apart again." Andrea runs to a little girl that he loves very much. He has fun all day long with her in the mountains. He runs to his inseparable friend, his dear... "Susy!" he exclaims, eyes open wide. She smiles and nods. He

Finally there came a perfect storm of drafts from uptown and downtown, a big humid uric wind that swept the platform and then reversed itself, and reversed itself again, so that the dollar bills came levitating out of the guitar case and drifted up and down the platform like leaves in autumn, tumbling and skidding, while the band played on. It was perfectly beautiful and perfectly sad, and everybody on the platform knew it, nobody bent down to touch the money.

She is a natural performer. And when she moves her hips in a seductive rhythm, she sets the hastening pace of all men’s’ hearts. She shivers her sunburned body like a prehistoric reptile – crawling into the most obscure and hidden corners of men’s sub consciousness. Nobody in the room winks with his eyes as he doesn’t want to miss the brief moment, in which the tiny boundary between what is simply enjoyable and the seriousness of the oldest human drive will be crossed. She is a tiny dancer, a dragonfly : And yet – dragonflies are predators: She is a “no man’s land”. She does not ride for those, who are present. This ride is a borrowed time from her sober tomorrow. Her skin is like a sheer curtain - one could see her veins - sad highways to the Promised Land. You could almost feel her bending in your hands, indocile and tense as guitar’s first string – the one that gives the tenderest shades of the melody, but the most hysterical ones as well. She`s an ace tightrope-walker who could easily walk on your nerves with blinded eyes and dig new craters in your shattered heart.

There is so much more to the notes being strum from his guitar, behind everything is raw emotion, and it’s proof that he is human. That his heart beats just like mine and that sadness can infiltrate those that appear to have souls made out of stone.

If God had a stethoscope, and if He held it up to this part of the dreary world to check for a heartbeat, I hope these are the sounds He'd hear: the sound of boots stomping rhythms out of the dust. The sounds of happy squeals and laughter when people spin out, nearly dizzy from joy. The sound of a scratchy voice, a thumping guitar, a plucky violin. That's what pure joy sounds like. Sometimes that's when I miss my mama most. Not just when I'm sad, but when I'm happy... and I can't share that happiness with her.

player hummed for a second, then sweet sad acoustic guitar filled the air, arpeggiated cascades that transformed the cramped space of the room. The voice that followed was smoky and haunting, filled with loss:

The words fumble past my lips before I even realize what I’m saying. Crickets and sad guitar notes fill the void left in the wake of my words—in the wake of all that’s unspoken.

The guitar tones and the thumpy thumpy drums soaking into me so hard. People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad, I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.

Answer 1: My favorite type of music is Jazz. In fact, I love playing guitar (what) with my friends (who) in my bedroom (where) on the weekends (when). Sadly, I’m terrible (how), but I find it relaxing (why) (why I play guitar).

Yves treats my wife as if she were a plaything, and continually assures me that she is charming. I find her as exasperating as the cicalas on my roof; and when I am alone at home, side by side with this little creature twanging the strings of her long-necked guitar, facing this marvellous panorama of pagodas and mountains, I am overcome by sadness almost to tears.

A good guitar is like a friend. Sometimes when you’re lonely, bored, or depressed, you pick that guitar up and play and all at once it’s gone. It’s like a conversation with a good friend, I imagine. You play an old song, and you remember all kinds of wonderful things. Or you come across a sad song and recall some bad things…” -Doc Watson

Both the lyrics and melody were straightforward, and though I wasn’t knowledgeable about what was going on with his guitar, the other instruments, or the backup vocals, the song was pleasurable to listen to at the same time that it was devastatingly sad. Was Noah Brewster himself sad? With that hair and those big white teeth?

[“This poem is not addressed to you”] This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will. Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids. It is not sad, really, only empty. Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why. It prefers to remember nothing. Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago. Your type of beauty has no place here. Night is the sky over this poem. It is too black for stars. And do not look for any illumination. You neither can nor should understand what it means. Listen, it comes without guitar, Neither in rags nor any purple fashion. And there is nothing in it to comfort you. Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon. You will forget the poem, but not before It has forgotten you. And it does not matter. It has been most beautiful in its erasures. O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned! Nor is one silence equal to another. And it does not matter what you think. This poem is not addressed to you.

Bryan Ferry: ‘It’s always sad when I go back to Newcastle and see that certain places don’t exist any more. But it’s great that one shop – which was very important for me also – is still there, in a wonderful old arcade, with extravagant tiled floors, rather like the Bond Street arcades. It’s a shop called Windows, which is a family music shop and the only place you really go to buy records. The windows are full of clarinets, saxophones, electric guitars – a proper music shop, which sold everything. But just to see a trumpet in the window – a real instrument, to look at it and study it!

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand - and I have big fat hands - I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

That is their work, they imply, and they also imply that you, and your actual work, are fine but also neglectful and sad. They don’t say that, though. They say, Don’t worry if you can’t be there, at the mid-fall solstice sing-along, the late-winter sledding-song craft fair and potluck. Not a big deal with the mid-spring parent-student doubles badminton under-the-lights evening funmaker. No problem with the mother-daughter pajama party on every third Wednesday movie day Sound of Music bring your own guitar or lyre. No need to bring treats on your child’s birthday. No need to come in for career day. No need to swing by the opening of the new art studio which features real clay-throwing technology. Don’t care about art? Not an issue. No need, no need, no need, it’s fine, no problem, though you really are selfish and your children doomed. When they are first to try crack—they will try it and love it and sell it to our culture-loving children—we will know why.

Yet Bowie was just hitting his golden years, rushing out his five best albums from 1976 to 1980, the best five-album run of anyone in the seventies (or since): Station to Station, Low, “Heroes,” Lodger, and Scary Monsters. In this time span, he also made the two albums that brought back Iggy Pop from the dead—The Idiot, prized by Bowie freaks as a rare showcase for his eccentric lead guitar, and Lust for Life—and his finest live album, Stage, from the 1978 tour, absurdly turning the ambient instrumentals from Low and “Heroes” into arena rock. As he put it at the time, “I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants—they’re Pierrot, the eternal clown putting across the great sadness of 1976.

morning bacon and eggs, I sit on the toilet with my acoustic guitar and make up sad country songs about how annoying I am while I take a big ol’ cry-shit.

Sadly, as he was currently doing fifty along the M8, the air guitar wasn’t an option.