Years ago in my training to become a hospital chaplain I received some advice to hug my past, and be hugged by it. I’m not sure I really knew at the time what that meant, but I never forgot it. In the past few months I finally acted on that advice and started playing classical guitar again after giving it up 30 years ago.

Half way through my Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Toronto I suddenly stopped playing, sold my first and only real classical guitar—my beloved old and LOUD Larrivee—and then finished the degree with a specialization in music history and literature.

Before university I studied classical guitar as a teenager with Alan Torok at Eli Kassner’s Guitar Academy in Toronto. I realize now how that was such a big part of my past that I had cut off for so many years. And I can acknowledge  how selling my Larrivee cut a deep wound in me.

To replace the Larrivee I bought a new classical guitar built by one of Jean Larrivee’s original students—Bruce West, a luthier in Stirling, Ontario.

And I dug out my box of old sheet music, including the guitar preludes of Villa-Lobos, guitar transcriptions of Bach cello suites, pieces by Rodrigo, and others I was working on, all inscribed with notes and markings by me and Alan, all frozen in time.

I am astonished at how familiar those pages are to me. And I marvel at how I had such a luxury of time and patience all those years ago to practice for hours and hours on end without interruption. And I’m amazed at how there was a time in my life when I could actually play all those pieces of music.

Memories flood in. I remember the first time I played in a student recital at the George Ignatieff Theatre. I remember playing one of Alan’s own compositions at Hart House in a Kiwanis music festival, where I won a small prize. I remember travelling by train by myself when I was 19 up to Saint-Irénée, north of Quebec City on the St. Lawrence River, to play in a master class with David Russell in the Domaine Forget Summer Music Festival.

So many memories draw me back. I am hugging my past all right. And it’s hugging me. First a bear hug, then a death squeeze.

Now I’m learning how to embrace my past without getting stuck back there; how to integrate my past into living life forward.

Sometimes it helps me to listen to Abbey Lincoln sing this favourite jazz tune—Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams—accompanied by Stan Getz, Hank Jones and Charlie Haden.

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

Summer wishes, winter dreams

Drifting down forgotten streams

Songs and faces, smiles and whispers

come from far away to visit me this day

Yesterday has come to tea

Sitting here across from me

Dressed in faded flowers

And rambling on for hours

And hours I’d love to stay

But I must meet today.

My story is not unique. Classical guitarist Glenn Kurtz tells his own similar story of loss and return in his book Practicing: A musician’s return to music (New York: Vintage, 2008).

I wonder if you might even have a similar story of your own . . .

Hugs,

Robert