Chapter One (Part IV): Dust, Hedges, and the Gospel of Six Strings

And then it happened.

Not a lightning strike. Not a sermon. Nothing that would impress a historian.

Just a song slipping through the cracks.

Dust in the Wind came first—like a ghost with manners. It didn’t kick the door down, didn’t demand attention. It just hovered there, fingerpicked and fragile, saying everything ends and somehow making that feel…holy. Like impermanence wasn’t a threat but an invitation.

I remember standing still.

Which was unusual for me.

Because something in that song didn’t just speak—it unraveled. All the noise, all the rules, all the careful hiding in the rocks… it loosened. Not gone. Just…less convincing.

And then the hedges.

All Along the Watchtower didn’t float in—it arrived. Electric. Urgent. Like the bushes themselves had learned how to shout. Hendrix didn’t play the guitar; he negotiated with it. Bent it, burned it, asked it questions no one else had the courage to phrase.

Between those two songs, something snapped into place.

Or maybe it snapped open.

Dust told me nothing lasts.
Hendrix told me it doesn’t matter—play anyway.

That was it.

No philosophy book tucked in the rocks could compete with that kind of clarity. Nietzsche whispered. Kierkegaard wrestled. Girard mapped the human condition like a cartographer of invisible wars.

But the guitar?

The guitar didn’t explain anything.

It was the answer.

From then on, it was simple.

Guitar.
Guitar.
And guitar love.

Not the kind you brag about. The kind you carry. The kind that hums in your hands even when you’re not holding one. The kind that makes you look at a piece of wood and wire and think: this is how I speak now.

Jack and Walter had uncorked something, sure.

But this—this was mine.

The pool gave me weightlessness.
The rocks gave me secrecy.
But the guitar—

The guitar gave me a way out that didn’t require leaving.

And once you hear that—once it gets into your bones—you don’t choose it.

It chooses you.

Over and over again.

Until everything else starts to sound like silence.