Wednesday 23 May 2007

The Sweet Strains of the Steel

"Anyone who doesn't like it, doesn't have a heart." That's what a Toowoomba steeler told me once.

One woman said she hears the steel guitar as poetry.

"Nothin' short of dyin' half as lonesome as the sound."

Wikipedia mentions its beautiful "liquid, yearning" sound.

"Moaning".

"Weeping" - others feel it deeper.

A sound that "just makes the hair on the back of my head stand up".

And if it "don't raise the hair on your head, you must be baldheaded".

"The only type of music that 'feels right'," someone said.

"I felt home".

They're right.

Like a Republican Party victory celebration; like Jimmy Swaggart in the pulpit; like a second-half comeback by Queensland's State of Origin team; like an arrangement of flowers; like a honeymoon on a Pacific island in an endless summer - it's just beautiful!

Every now and then I can't resist getting my late grandfather's lap steel out of the cupboard - to allow my fingers and my heart that sound which somehow just puts you in touch with everything your heart's been longing for.

One of those days where nothing much else gets done...

I can't wait to see my granddad again. He was pretty good at it while he was here - I can only imagine how sweetly he can play it now after these many years in heaven - where he, and my great-grandfather, my great-great grandfather, and my great-great-great grandfather are all together, beholding the beautiful face of Jesus every day.

"Behold I go and prepare a place for you. And if I go, I will doubtless come again, and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."

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