Page 6 - Scar Girl

L e n V L a h o s

HARBINGER JONES
We decided to take the next day off from rehearsal.

But I never take a day off from the guitar. I was hanging
out in the basement in my parents’ house, watching The
Price is Right, the guitar on my lap.
After a while I found myself picking the same riff over

and over again. It was kind of beautiful. Maybe that sounds
immodest, but it’s the only word I can use to describe what
I was hearing. Everything around me dropped away. The
TV became a blur of muted color, the cheering of the game-

show audience faded to static. The only thing I could hear
was that riff.
That’s kind of amazing because my guitar wasn’t even
plugged in. When you play the electric guitar, you can

barely hear it if it’s not plugged in. But when you play often
enough, your brain interprets what little sound there is and
compensates for it. It’s like my brain engaged some sort of
organic alpha-wave amplifier that allowed me to hear that

riff with perfect clarity.
I played it over and over again until it had the rhythm
and cadence of a slow-moving train. Next thing I knew, my
hands shifted to a chord progression built off the line I’d

been playing, and I knew I had a song.
I started singing, the words more or less coming to me
without interruption.
I bet when authors write books, they probably get

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