Cartter’s only been playing guitar for a few months, and his early competence has been stunning. He already has a repertoire of a dozen or so songs, a couple of which he composed himself, the rest simple numbers by the likes of The White Stripes, Green Day, and Nirvana. He’s devoted to his craft. He’s a little rocker, and it suits him adorably well, like a two-year-old in a well-fitted tux, except he’s an almost nine-year-old in an oversized Nirvana t-shirt, purchased at his behest from Target.
When it comes to his music, Cartter has strong opinions based on very scant knowledge. He was practicing in the living room the night before the first day of school, showing me the different ways he can play a particular tune, when his brother, overhearing, called out from the bathroom, “Are you playing tripods?” tripods being of course, three note chords based on thirds rather than the simpler power chords based on fifths.
“They aren’t called tripods!” Cartter hollered back.
“Does he mean triads?” I asked.
“No, trioids,” Cartter wrongly insisted. “T-R-I-O-I-D-S.”
He was kneeling on the floor with his electric guitar, and I was sitting above him on the couch. A few minutes earlier, I’d heard him run through a bunch of songs in his room, finishing with one I recognized but couldn’t quite place. “What was that song you just played?” I asked when he came out to the living room. He couldn’t say, and instead rushed back into his room to grab his instrument and play the song for me again. It turned out to be Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” Such has been his acquisition of knowledge thus far; his fingers move up and down the neck of the guitar and pluck and strum the strings with remarkable adeptness while his vocabulary lags ever so slightly, and amusingly, behind.
I’m doing my best not to interfere with his full embrace of this new guitar-playing identity. I haven’t had the heart to tell him that Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain killed himself, and I went along with chords being called trioids, but when his mom told me that he loved the movie Freaker Friday because Lindsay Lohan plays electric guitar in it, I couldn’t resist the urge to tease. “Wait,” I said sitting next to him at the kitchen table at dinner, “Lindsay Lohan plays electric guitar . . . Cartter plays electric guitar . . . Cartter is Lindsay Lohan?” To my surprise and satisfaction, he didn’t protest but rather beamed a sheepish smile at me. Cartter is not embarrassed of being a guitarist. To his way of thinking, if Lindsay Lohan is a guitarist, then Lindsay Lohan is cool, which begs the question, what would he think if I told him Taylor Swift plays guitar? If anything, I’d guess his hatred of her might be shaken; I’m positive that his idealization of guitar playing would remain unchanged.
After Cartter corrected me about “trioids,” and Scotty returned from the toilet, the boys, Danyelle and I all sat in the living room listening to Pink Floyd and White Stripes on the Sonos speakers. We listened to Cartter play some too. Scotty lounged beside me on the couch, and Cartter played random riffs, prompting me to ask, “What is that?”
He’s already made friends with a new kid at school who plays guitar too. For his first homework assignment, he’s using pictures of himself playing the electric guitar to convey to his teachers and classmates what is “special” about him. He’s way less nervous about the start of the school year than he’s ever been, and I think it has a lot to do with the comfort his guitar provides. Kneeling on the living room floor, noodling E minor blues riffs and strumming power chords, all he can say when I ask him what he’s playing is, “I don’t know.” He flashes a big toothy grin when he says it. I really love that guitar.
The Raging Elitist 