Linguistic Differences

I have been making great attempts at the language of Spain lately. I am in no danger of falling into fluency anytime soon.

The problem is that Spanish is so much damn work. Keep in mind that my native tongue is Rural-Coloradoan. Most of my English speaking experience is a little soft on technique. The key to speaking my native tongue is pronouncing most vowels identically and routinely dropping consonants that seem like too much work. You city folks like to call it mumbling. For instance, were you to want to explain to your Rural Colorado that you are not concerned with a choice, it would help to say this:

Ah'on't cur. Donm'ckno diffurnce t'me.

The key is to pretend that every movement of jaw and tongue is an extravagant effort that shouldn't be wasted on just any occasion. I have since learned English, but my native tongue keeps wantint'crep up. That is why Spanish is so difficult. The pronunciations are all so expressive and the mechanics pay so much attention to precise flow. I really didn't like the language until today.

You see, in English, I play guitar. It is an object held in my will, iron fists extracting some trivial game from the polished wood. In Spanish, toco la guitarra. To play insinuates a lack of concern, an informality in the approach. Toco, tocar, tocando, all mean to "touch." I do not play an instrument as a baggy clothed teenage boy plays a girl, I touch an instrument like la esposa. There is respect. There is an implied permission granted by the subject.

The difference in language carries into the musician. I submit that Jimmy Page, with his lightning speed and lightning jumpsuit is merely playing while he sashays and pinwheels all over the stage. He is producing music and putting on a production. He is using the instrument as a tool. As an axe. This is why his riffs make me want to drive fast, fuck girls, and punch faces.

Compare and contrast to the great Andres Segovia. His phrasing, so respectful, so tender, borne of years of intimate knowledge, makes emotions I have never been properly equipped to deal with flood into me and well up in my throat. I want to sit in a dark room and love this life, love a woman, feel every breath enter and escape. I want to hear every day begin again and share it with a warm body, light slanting down from the window in tiger stripes of rose and gold.

This is the difference in "to play" and "tocar."