A guitar, when you play it, it changes. No two guitars sound the same. The way you play, where it's kept, the conditions, the air, the weather, the weathering. It all plays a part in shaping it, growing it. If you took a room and filled it with used guitars and left them there for a very long time, each one would still sound just as different from every other.
But you wear a shirt. And let's say you wear it every week, every week for years. And you put that shirt in a room with other shirts, hundreds of other shirts, that have been worn hundreds of days over so much time. You leave them there together and they start to change. Any odors they've taken on, any trace of you, that vanishes. Their smells become one smell.
And so now I've got your old guitar, I'm wearing your old flannel, the one you wore all the time, even when it was warm. It sounds like you, smells like you. And the more I play the more I hear you. And the more I put it on the more you fade away. I want to be more than the sum of our parts. I want to be better. But as time goes on I can see myself forgetting. I can see myself here, staying exactly the same as I am now.
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