There was a guitarist who became frightened of wrong notes. When he was young he played thousands of them and didn’t care. Later, when people began calling him serious, it ruined everything. Now if he played even one bad note in concert he could remember it all the next week. He would be driving somewhere and suddenly there it was again. Should have been B-natural not B-flat. His girlfriend asked why he was so quiet. “Nothing.” It was never nothing. It was B-flat vs. B-natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Someone told him about an old mystic who played the recorder, although when the guitarist finally found him the old mystic said he wasn’t a mystic and didn’t know why people kept saying that. He lived behind a gas station about four kilometers outside Picton, and repaired bicycles. The guitarist had come a long way. He wasn’t going to let this spoil things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I hear you can teach me how not to make mistakes.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“No.” The old man continued fixing a tire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually the guitarist said, “That’s it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You asked.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I thought there would be more.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There’s tea.” They drank tea. After a while the old man noticed the guitar case. “Play.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guitarist played. He chose something difficult because otherwise what was the point of travelling all this way. About two minutes in, he missed a note. He stopped. The old man looked out the window. “I made a mistake.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I heard.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What should I do when that happens?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You’re doing it.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This annoyed the guitarist. He started again. He missed another note but continued, although now he was thinking about the note he’d missed and consequently missed two more. The old mystic began laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“One wrong note hired two assistants.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guitarist put down the guitar. He was beginning to think the trip was a mistake. Later the old mystic took a recorder from a drawer. It wasn’t beautiful. There was tape around one end. He played a little melody. The musician listened carefully. The old man squeaked terribly on one note. Then he played another note. That was all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You made a mistake,” said the guitarist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Probably, yep’r.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Didn’t it bother you?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It already happened.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guitarist waited for the rest of the teaching. A truck pulled into the gas station. Somewhere outside a dog barked. The old man finished his tea. The musician stayed three days. Mostly they repaired bicycles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the last morning the musician asked, “What am I supposed to have learned?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The old mystic shrugged. “How would I know?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seemed a very poor answer, and for several years the musician told people the old mystic was a fraud. Then one night, halfway through a concert in Winnipeg, he played an absolutely appalling chord. He felt the familiar machinery starting up. You idiot. How could you….Then for some reason he remembered the recorder. He played the next chord. Nobody died. A woman in the third row coughed. Someone dropped a glass near the bar. So he kept going. Years afterward, somebody asked him what the old man near Picton taught him. He said, “Nothing.” Then he thought about it. “Actually, that’s not true. He taught me the next note.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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