Guitar Man – Song Description
“He knows it worked when He laid that finger on your brow.” This song credits the guitarist’s talent to something given rather than something purely earned through practice and discipline, and I want to be clear that I mean that plainly, not as a polite modesty neither of us actually believes. I think real skill, the kind that goes beyond competent technique into something that actually moves people, often feels less like an achievement to the person who has it and more like something they were simply handed early on and have spent the rest of their life trying to become worthy of. I’ve watched gifted musicians describe their own best moments this way more than once — almost bewildered by where a particular passage came from, as though they were more conduit than author in that instant. I don’t think that diminishes the years of work it took to be ready to receive it when it arrived. But the gift itself, the raw capacity underneath all that practice, still strikes me as something closer to grace than to accomplishment.
Your fingers picking
Through those strings
That riff of yours
Divine
Mellow, sparkling
Cutting
Like the finest wine
Your message
Floating, fleeting
Love embracing
Again so divine
If god is watching
Your devotion,
If god is seeing you now
He knows it worked
When he laid
That finger on your brow
You have captured
Many
With a sound
So sublime
Endless, thrilling
Never out of time
You will leave us
With a memory
Just what was
Written
And ordinary folk
Truly smitten
You have captured
Many
With a sound
So sublime
Endless, thrilling
Never out of time
You will leave us
With a memory
Just what was
Written
And ordinary folk
Truly smitten
Lyrics – Michael Forty