From the Depths of My Soul :: Personal Narrative essay about myself

From the Depths of My Soul    ``Songs my father taught me'' should be the title of everything I play. His teachings took place from my first breath to his last. They are profoundly present in every moment that I am with the guitar. He taught me to love her, to care for her and to give myself to her.    Many times I went to sleep listening to him playing classical guitar, or woke up to the sound of a Bach gavotte! While walking in the old part of town, he would call my attention to the moonlight illuminating the narrow streets, or smell the flowers perfuming the old city, and then tell me``This is the Fandanguillo of Turina!''    I saw my father under persecution by the republicans and later decorated with honors by the democrats. I saw my father in poverty and I saw him financially successful. One thing remained untouched - his love of music, his love of the guitar. He practiced with the same devotion when there was no sight or hope of a successful career as he did later when success did come. The collection of music I play in homage to him was an essential part of the repertoire he always kept with him and gave to my brothers and me so that through our love of it we could search for beauty and that unattainable perfection that is the guiding light of all the great servants of music.    My father was a genius; he is an immortal man. I always wanted to believe in immortality. I always wanted to believe in eternal life, and intellectually I did. But in my heart, I had my doubts. In the last moments that my father and I spent together, he took these doubts away. He taught me that indeed there is a God. He taught me that there is eternal life, and we made a pact that we would soon be together, reunited, and in full recognition of each other.    My father taught me many things. When he was alive we had the most beautiful and most perfect love affair that two people could have. My father was the greatest guitarist known to me, and everything in me is only an offspring of that magnificent tree of music that he was. And everything that passes from me to future generations will be an offshoot of that beautiful root that was completely ingrained in the earth of music.